Do you have an itchy microphone finger? Or perhaps your CW key is in need of some exercise? The RSGB’s Islands on the Air contest is being run again this weekend on both Phone (SSB) and CW. It starts from 1200 UTC Saturday 25th July and concludes 1200z Sunday 26th July. You can enter one or both modes depending on your preferences.
Australian and New Zealand stations are particularly sought after in this contest as we automatically fall into the “Island – Fixed” station category where we qualify for more points for every station we work, plus we are worth more points to other stations around the world who call us.
The contest exchange consists of a serial number followed by your IOTA reference. For amateurs on mainland Australia that is OC-001 (which on CW is usually sent as OCTT1). If you are on Tasmania you are on OC-006. If you are lucky enough to be on some other island, then take a look at the IOTA directory to find your correct island group designator.
If you are also an IOTA Awards chaser, this contest is also very lucrative for advancing your IOTA chase. The IOTA Ltd board who run the award have an arrangement with the RSGB to ingest all logs from the contest after the event and valid contest contacts are then able to be counted towards your IOTA tally. Many operators, especially in Europe, head out to seldom activated islands for the contest, so it becomes a rich target environment for IOTA awards chasers too! If you want to learn more about the IOTA awards, then head over to their website iota-world.org.
If you are chasing new island, the following refernece is also very helpful! NG3K collates a list of known IOTA Contest expedition activations each year which is helpful if you are particualrly targetting first time contacts with some of these island groups. You can access his list (here).
So if you just cant get enough of contesting then why not give the IOTA contest a try? If you have never considered starting the chase for the IOTA awards program, this is also the perfect starting place to help you achieve you first 100 islands. We hope to see you on the air!