Amateur Radio and Cycling: Experimentation of two Chilean colleagues working on QRP in the 10M with interesting contacts with distant stations.

Two Chilean radio amateurs, Lorenzo Passalaqua Fredes CA2PJP and Heinrich Wittig Barreto CA2EIH, both members of the Radio Club Los Molinos de Villa Alemana, a commune in the Valparaíso region, planned to do amateur radio from their mountain bikes.

Visiting the mountains of the city where they live, with low power and testing different antennas for the 10 meter band (28 MHz) easy to mount and transport, they have been achieving interesting communications with radio amateurs around the world.

They proposed to use low-cost equipment, confirming that amateur radio only requires experimentation for the antenna to be adequate, since with favorable propagation, the signal can travel thousands of kilometers.

Another very important factor is that they gradually prepared themselves to use their bicycles and go to places away from technological noises inserted in the city, finding very low level to enjoy remote contacts of long-distance contacts.

Above all, European colleagues have appreciated the experience, as they have tested the reception of their stations, which with only 5 watts have been able to receive the signal from Chile.

This is not the first time that radio amateurs who love cycling have combined cycling and their passion for radio.

In Argentina it is remembered the bicycle raid of Héctor Cattani LW3DLY in September 2006, when he rode 800 kilometers in 8 days from Colón, province of Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca, as part of the First International Amateur Radio Meeting Bahía Blanca 2006, communicating with his handy with colleagues from different towns and cities.

Something similar happened with Ernesto Alberto Paiva LU7FOE, who in November 2021 after the Covid pandemic, went from his town San Jeronimo Sud in the province of Santa Fe by bicycle to the Basilica of Our Lady of Lujan, patron saint of Argentina, more than 300 km away. He was accompanied by a Yaesu 2500 handy, placing a 5/8 mobile antenna for VHF and a 12V switching source on the back of the vehicle, and was accompanied by colleagues all the way.