Amateur Radio Activities Trivandrum: VHF Hill Topping Contest 2013

The first VHF Hill Topping Contest was held on 19 and 20 January 2013. The timing was 12 a.m. Saturday 19 till 12 a.m. Sunday 20. It was organized by the Amateur Radio Society of India (ARSI). The Hill Topping Contest was planned to encourage VHF DXing, exploring new summits and hill top locations, experimenting with various kinds of antennas, contacting different grid locations across, etc.

Photo Credit: http://arsi.info

The important rules for the contest, include:

The contesting team may consist of one or more hams operating one contest station from that particular hill top location.
Each hill top station should specify their exact grid location or point of operation and will not be allowed to shift locations during the period of contest.
Each hill top contest station may be operated by any of the team members but the logging will be for that particular hill top contest team callsign as assigned.
All hill top stations should strictly adhere to amateur rules, specially with regard to max RF power levels.
Mode of operation will be FM, commonly available in most rigs and used by majority of hams.
Antennas can be any kind but safe, as long as they do not cause harm to the public or co-members of the team.
Each hill top contesting team should make the max number of simplex contacts with other hill top stations, or with other non hill top or fixed stations from various cities, towns, etc. (Contacts through repeater or Echolink is invalid)
Only One contact is counted for scoring points. No duplicate contact to be logged for points.
Each contact is counted as 1 point.

The Trivandrum VHF team had actively participated in the contest. We managed to operate the VHF Hill Topping Contest from St. Shantal School premise, Malamukal, Trivandrum. The callsign for the contest operation was VU2AJO and the allocated frequency was on simplex 144.450 MHz at grid location MJ88LM, 8 deg 54 min North and 76 deg 99 min East. The equipments that have been used for the purpose include Yaesu FT857D with 5 element beam Yagi and Yaesu FT2800M with 5 element beam Yagi. We also did take 2 back up batteries, power supplies, generator, and other accessories and supplies. We worked from a comfortable location in the building where we were able to place all the equipments and erect the antenna on top.

Many hams from Trivandrum were present at the spot and we had a wonderful eyeball and VHF contest activity, both hand in hand ;) The contest went overnight and we sat late through the night. We were able to make a total of 27 VHF contacts and listened a lot more stations from the Malamukal hill location. The longest contacts made were from stations located at Manipal, Madras, and Kodaikanal more than 700 Kms away. We made a surprising contact with VU2RDL Old Man Rajagopal through UHF who was operating from another hill location in Nilamel, Kollam District about 65 km away and VU3SQG OM Saji communicated with him using just a rubber duckie antenna.

The team members participated in the contest include VU2AJO, VU2PAG, VU3SQG, VU3BRD, VU3AUE, VU3SFJ, VU2KHC, VU3ROR, VU2JQX, VU3REG, VU3DDE, VU2LVJ, VU2TTR, VU2ACT, Mr. Prabin etc.

Some Photo Shoot of the Event: