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Point The Beams South! Antarctica is On The Air!
3 November 2011 | by According t a post on Southgate’s website, Tomas, CE9VPM, will be active from the Chilean Gab Gonzales Videla base from November 2011 until March 2012 and wants to work stations mainly on 20 meters. No word on specific ranges of frequencies on 20 meters has been released. But if you look, on the bands, I don’t think you could miss the pile up.
Map Courtesy of Wikipedia/Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica team
Tomas also has a nice slideshow up on the French Polar Team’s website, showing a map with the location as well as some pictures of the base as well. From the website:
Gabriel Gonzales Videla Station, on the Antarctic mainland’s Paradise Bay (Danco Coast), is named after Chilean President Gabriel González Videla, who in the 1940s became the first chief of state of any nation to visit Antarctica. The station was active from 1951-1958, and was reopened briefly in the early 1980s. It is now an “inactive” station, with fuel and supplies in storage in the buildings for emergency use, or in case the station were to be reactivated in the future. Occasional summer visits are made by Chilean parties and tourists. On the north edge of the station there is a sign identifying Waterboat Point as an official historic site under the Antarctic Treaty. This was the place where the smallest ever wintering-over party (two men) spent a year and a day in 1921-1922.
The article at Southgate also says that Tomas was regularly active as CE9/CE3VPM from the Eduardo Frei Montalva base (South Shetlands) in 2008/2009.
Looking on the site, I saw there was a mailing list for Ham Radio in Antarctica, hosted on Yahoo! I haven’t checked this out, but I’m betting if you wanted to work the continent, that would be a good resource to find out more of who is working on what station and the best time to listen for them.
Has anyone reading worked any of the stations down there? I would love to hear about it.
73.
Rich also writes a Tech blog and posts stories every Tuesday and Thursday on Q103, Albany’s #1 Rock Station website, as well as Amateur Radio stories every Monday thru Friday on AmiZed Studios and hosts a podcast called The Kim & Rich Show with his fiance’ Kim Dunne
One Response to “Point The Beams South! Antarctica is On The Air!”
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No beam at this QTH so maybe this weekend I will turn the K3 a little sound and see how that works…very good to know and thanks for posting it. I will give them a go on CW and see how it works out.