All was going right since i moved to my Bangalore QTH in 2012 and just when I thought I got hang of contesting, a massive high rise building next to my Bangalore QTH came up by early 2018. This diminished most of my DX contest windows from North West to North East directions (major directions for us).

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I was searching for alternate location to operate contests and conduct some field experiments when not in contest. Search took me many other places which were ideal such as near to the beach, bit remote villages near the coast etc. I ultimately settled on my ancestral place at Panemangalore as it would otherwise kept unoccupied, my family was OK with me putting up some antennas and setting station there.

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Bit history of QTH:

Panemangalore is around 300Km west of Bangalore near coastal city of Mangalore. 
It is a small town on the banks of river Nethravati - a primary source of water to Mangalore. It is also told that the town got its name because it was like Paani (ಪಾಣಿ meaning Hand in Kannada language) to Mangalore. It was a trade junction, where traders rested after traversing the river waterways to arriving from Mangalore sea port and then continued their journey by bullock karts towards inland (Mysore, Bangalore and other Deccan plateau areas) probably till late 1960s. This is also a land of freedom fighters including my grand father Late Shri. P Madhav Padiyar. 

PaneMangalore today is no more a trade junction. There is a national highway connecting Mangalore to Bangalore running on one side. 

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QTH has a Northen tapering hillock on the East side and few houses on the other directions. There is no much land to place beverage antennas( oh yes, there is another wooded property right across the street to put those wires in future), but definitely couple of yagis and verticals can be spread in the property. In 1980s, when TV was new to our town,  we used to have 14 element VHF TV yagi pointed to West (pointing to Mangalore). It sometimes used to grab Arabic TV channels (from gulf countries). Probably, it was tropo ducting, but who knew that i was getting into real DXing later :). My beloved father (Late Shri. Subhaschandra Padiyar) was my first elmer in the field of electronics. 

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HF Terrain analysis shows decent elevation angles to all directions for HF contests. I have made my first contesting efforts from this QTH in 2011 using Hexbeam at just 15 feet above ground. It was brutal in terms getting QSOs, I struggled to make just over 100 QSOs over the weekend with low power. Over last few years, i have improved my contesting skills a bit. So hoping to do better from this location.

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Intent of this website:

As we understand - knowledge is infinite and it is a journey, not the destination.  Through the pages and blog posts etc, I love to share my fascinating experiences through out this journey. I have many of my best buddies huddle and giggle along in this journey too..

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See you on air

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VU2XE Kiran