Islands On The Air (IOTA) is an award program for radio amateurs interested in making contacts with stations located on islands worldwide. The program was launched in 1964 and since then has become one of the most popular award programs in amateur radio.
Contents
IOTA is managed by the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) who provide an introductory page to the program on their website.
History
In 1964 a British short wave listener (SWL), Geoff Watts started an activity programme based on contacting island groups around the world. He realized that the numbers of individual islands worldwide was far too large to manage, so he brought them together into manageable groups of islands, forming the backbone of the award program as it stands today. Geoff managed the IOTA lists and records until 1985 when he handed over to the RSGB.
Awards
The IOTA website keeps track of awards and scores achieved in its annual listings and includes among others:
More details can be had from the IOTA website
Activity
The programme is very popular, with many activations of islands per year. An overview of these can be had from the IOTA website, which displays a constantly-updated list of new and forthcoming activations.
IOTA Directory
As well as managing the list online, the RSGB and IOTA publish an IOTA Directory, with a new edition available each year, and which can be had from the RSGB online shop.
Supplementary information
With so many islands and groups of islands in all continents, it can be difficult to keep track of where they are, or where the latest activations are taking place around the world. So, mapping of IOTA islands and groups can be very helpful in gaining an extra perspective on the programme. Various mapping tools are available online, among which are the following: