Regardless if this is a record or not, the PR is great for the Ham community in general. Also, his accomplishments and the PR hopefully will motivate some of those working the birds to download the WJST software and slew their modest antennas towards the moon. Six months ago, on a whim I downloaded the WJST software, aimed my 20 element crossed yagi 2M satellite antenna at the moon and heard W5UN and worked him. I was so excited and felt like a Novice making my first contact. Since then I have made over 100 contacts ( although, I have slowly grown my antennas and power to do it). I happened to be on the air the day Angus made the contact. I could not hear him, but I heard the other station he was working. He was luckily ( or smart enough) to pick one of the few days of the month when EME conditions were close to perfect and also picked up an additional 6 db of ground gain as he was working the moon on his Horizon. He also was compensating for Faraday rotation as he was switching between horizontal and Vertical elements through out the QSO. Was it a record? It does not matter. It was an accomplishment! And hopefully it will serve as motivation for anyone with even a modest satellite station to aim for the moon.
Les WB2SZR, Daniel W2DBL
Nor was I trying to trivialize Angus' accomplishment. But I was curious what he used for antenna. ------------------------------------------------------ I think what made the contact by Angus all the more remarkable was that it's reported he was just using a single 7 element yagi in his attic so would suffer additional attenuation from roof tiles.
73 Trevor M5AKA ------------------------------------------------------
If the antenna was a 7-element yagi in his attic, as Trevor states, that was quite a accomplishment. BTW I heard my first 2m-eme signal in 1997 on a 10-element satellite antenna (with only horizontal elements) using a ARR preamp. It was one of the larger stations (K5GW) running CW.
I have found that the lower limit of EIRP is about 16 KW for two stations of equal size. That can be one yagi (13 dBd) and about 500w or four yagis (19 dBd) and 125w and requires running JT65 (remember dBd = 2.15 dBi). CW requires about 10-dB stronger signals as a rule.
Angus most likely worked one the super-big eme stations that are running lots of yagis. That extra gain makes up for a low power single yagi station. BTW my first 2-way eme QSO was with two yagis and 120w made with W5UN (32-yagis) on CW in 1998. Dave has given a lot of small stations their first contact!
73 Ed - KL7UW
At 06:30 AM 1/30/2008, Les Listwa wrote:
Regardless if this is a record or not, the PR is great for the Ham community in general. Also, his accomplishments and the PR hopefully will motivate some of those working the birds to download the WJST software and slew their modest antennas towards the moon. Six months ago, on a whim I downloaded the WJST software, aimed my 20 element crossed yagi 2M satellite antenna at the moon and heard W5UN and worked him. I was so excited and felt like a Novice making my first contact. Since then I have made over 100 contacts ( although, I have slowly grown my antennas and power to do it). I happened to be on the air the day Angus made the contact. I could not hear him, but I heard the other station he was working. He was luckily ( or smart enough) to pick one of the few days of the month when EME conditions were close to perfect and also picked up an additional 6 db of ground gain as he was working the moon on his Horizon. He also was compensating for Faraday rotation as he was switching between horizontal and Vertical elements through out the QSO. Was it a record? It does not matter. It was an accomplishment! And hopefully it will serve as motivation for anyone with even a modest satellite station to aim for the moon.
Les WB2SZR, Daniel W2DBL
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73, Ed - KL7UW ====================================== BP40IQ 50-MHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com 144-EME: FT-847, mgf-1801, 4x-xpol-20, 185w DUBUS Magazine USA Rep [email protected] ======================================
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Edward Cole -
Les Listwa