HISTORY OF HAM RADIO ACTIVITY FROM MYSORE:

After a long hiatus – due to restrictions at the office and due to certain changes in the home front, I had been off blogging. Now that things are stablilising a little bit, continuing the memoirs. Now back to where I had left off.

Along with the new language, I also learned about the history of HAM Radio activity in Mysore.

There was supposedly a bit of HAM radio activity from in and around Mysore with Mr. George – VU2TV (I never got to meet this elderly operator – he had reportedly shifted to the Gulf with family), Mr. Sampath (VU2YZ an entrepreneur with an electronics showroom in Mandya) and his wife Hemalatha (VU2TT – a teacher by profession – who passed on recently). In fact, the credit of putting Mysore on the HAM popularity map is due mainly to Sampath and his wife. He would travel daily to Mysore to conduct the HAM radio training to a group of enthusiasts. Such was the zeal of the youngsters that they used to practice the Morse code in their regular conversations.

The enthusiastic team was not just about students, there was an enthusiastic mother too. This team consisted of Ramanujam, Satish, Sriram, Shiva Kumar, Sukhbir Singh Jolly, Yogeesh, Mrs. Loveleen Kaur Jolly, to name a few (that I remember!). The exams for the first batch were conducted at PES College, Mandya and the candidates traveled for the exam. Last minute preparations and hospitality was organized at the residence of Sampath and Hema. The result of the exam was highly encouraging and the entire team came out with flying colours.

Mrs. Loveleen Kaur Jolly, a mother and a teacher by profession, came out highly successful, in fact even better than her son and secured a higher grade of license than him. In later years the entire family took to the hobby and all the family members including a son-in-law became HAMs.

With encouragement from the management of the SJCE college and with grants from the Mysore University, the Mysore University Amateur Radio Club was set up in 1983-84 with the call sign – VU2YSG – under the Electronics and Communication Department of SJCE. The College also procured a State of the Art – wireless equipment – a Japanese Make – transmitter – cum – receiver (Transceiver). This transceiver was capable of operating on all the allowed modes of transmission (AM – Amplitude Modulation- generally used by radio broadcasters, SSB – Single Side Band – a variation of the AM transmission but using lesser bandwidth, CW – Continuous Wave or Morse Code and FM – Frequency Modulation). In an earlier post, I had mentioned about listening to a few HAMs from SJCE before I got in touch with Mr. Muthanna. It was with this equipment that they were ON THE AIR when I listened to them.
This was the background of the Amateur Radio activity from Mysore when I made my entry into the hobby.