Lonavla Monsoon Field Trip

A monsoon field trip was arranged at Lonavla at Yogesh Gulati's (SWL) place. In all there were 21 hams and SWLs present on the weekend.

Two teams were made with senior hams and SWLs to carry out the activities in two days. It was raining very heavily for two days and it was nice to see all people working in the rain with raincoats and umbrellas busy installing the mast and making HF antennas.

Around 11 AM on Saturday all hams and SWLs got together to learn to how and where to install the mast, when you are on field, how to measure the length of a dipole for 40 and 20 metres band. Thanks a lot to VU2SFN (Shailesh) for sharing the knowledge on installing HF antennas and making contacts on air.

VU2SFN and VU2UGO both team leaders helped the SWLs in setting up the HF antenna and making contact at the earliest. VU2SFN's team was successfully able to make a contact before the other team. Was able to make a contact from a car, on 40 metre band with VU2UR and VU2JMA.

It was indeed a great learning experience to all hams and SWLs to work on HF as there are many who don't have HF radios. It was good learning experience for the SWLs to make a 2 metre dipole antenna, those two antennas and then using the same to trigger the Mumbai repeater. Thanks to WLL and PJM for standing by on the freq. to give support. We also had VA7AAX, a young ham from Canada.

Hams present for the field trip were:-

Feroze Patel (VU2FEO), Zarir (VU2VPQ), Basappa (VU2NXM), Zyros (VU2ZRS), Sandip (VU2UGO), Shailesh (VU2SFN), Sailin (VU2SGW), Surendra (VU2SFH), Ulhas (VU2UBP), Akshay (VA7AAX from Canada), Dilip (VU3DGB), Mukesh (VU2OMV), Shrikant (VU3SHX), Yogesh, Jayesh, Jagdish, Suhas, Pritesh, Manish and Jayprakash (All SWLs).

It was a real great drenching experience to one and all I thank all for participating and thanks to Yogesh Gulati for all the required arrangements at Lonavla.

I think there should be at least one Monsoon field trip or some event related to the hobby.

Thanks and Regards.