At 01:26 PM 4/15/2010 -0800, Edward Cole kl7uw@acsalaska.net wrote:
At 01:49 PM 4/15/2010, you wrote:
I noticed the moon is fairly close to the sun in the sky. There may be some solar noise, but I don't know how much noise the sun generates at 432.
KB7ADL
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Vince,
The Sun is approx. 20-degrees away from the Moon (today), so it may cause some degradation of receiver sensitivity, depending on how narrow your antenna beam is. I will be using a 16-foot dish with 9.9 degree HPBW. Hopefully, the sun will be down -15 dB or more when I point at the Moon. But if you are using a 15-dBi yagi yoru beamwidth is about 33-degrees and the sun will be seen by your system.
I don't have time to research what to expect in degradation, busy working on getting the antenna ready ;-)
73, Ed - KL7UW,
Your beamwidth will be a lot more narrower than mine. If I get a chance to give it a listen I'll be using an auto-tracked eight element RHCP yagi with a Landwehr preamp. There was an OM in the area that was an avid EME'er at one time. He has since passed away, I asked him once when is the best time to listen for stations doing EME, Full moon, New Moon, Quarter moon, and he said new moon was worst because of solar noise and also when the sun is within your beamwidth around new moon.
KB7ADL