Amateur Radio Operations at Antarctica

Amateur Radio Operations at Antarctica

Recently I heard that one Radio Amateur from my state has been selected for the next Antacrtic Expedition from VU land, the first Ham from this part of the country in recent times, to the best of my knowledge. VU2CUW is an Indian Radio Amateur currently there at Antarctica and will be returning by March 2024. Unfortunately, I was told that his HF antenna was damaged beyond repair in a storm some time back.

Update:  VU3TKF is the callsign of the person selected for the next Indian Expedition (43rd) to Antarctica from Kerala. Meanwhile VU2CUW is trying to put up a wire antenna when the wind speed is less than 15 knots. Look out for him mainly on 15 m, both voice and FT8, you might catch up with him soon if you are lucky!

A search on qrz.com returned 18 callsigns for the search word Antarctica – four CEs, one FT, and 13 LUs. So there is no general prefix for Antarctica. Wikipedia article on Call signs in Antarctica mentions that International Telecommunication Union does not assign call letter blocks to Antarctica as there is no single government there which can send delegates to ITU conferences.

Some countries reserve prefixes for Antarctica from within their on call letter blocks. Sometimes the assignments of call letter is made locally at an Antarctic base and the relevant national body is notified. You may be aware that Antarctica is international, as per the Antarctic Treaty which came into effect in 1961. All land and ice shelves South of 60 degrees South latitutde is defined as Antarctica. Antarctica is the only continent without a native human poputlation. I remember some of my local Ham friends mentioning that they had worked an Indian Ham at Antarctica long back, but I forgot the callsigns.

As per Vigyan Prasar webpage, VU2IF was the first Ham from India who was sent to Antarctica by the Government of India during its 1983-84 expedition. As per a report available online from VU2IF, operations from the ship was with the callsign VU2IF/MM3. Later the callsign was AT0A while operating from the base camp on the ice-shelf. RF power of 100 Watts was used for SSB contacts, with inverted V dipole and Cubical Quad antennas. Detailed report is available on the linked webpage, which is interesting to read. That was the third Indian Antarctic Mission. Current mission in which VU2CUW is participating is the 42nd one.

VU3BPZ has listed a lot of information on his past operations from Antarctica at his qrz.com page, which is quite interesting to read. It seems he had more than one trip to Antarctica, though the page has not been updated after the last proposed trip in 2016. He had installed Multiband Inverted V antennas at Bharati Station. He was using 80 Watts output power and had callsign VU3BPZ/P during that trip in 2012.

Update: VU3BPZ has informed me that he has worked 5 times from Antarctica with VU3BPZ/MM, AT10BP callsigns.