The story in the UK Scarborough Evening News about Angus Young M0IKB achieving Moonbounce with just 25 watts is a good illustration of the huge advances Amateurs have made in Moonbounce techniques over recent years. Not long ago it would have taken over 400 watts to achieve it.
Why Angus is over the Moon - Scarborough Today (with picture of Angus) http://www.scarborougheveningnews.co.uk/news/Why-Angus-is-over-the.3686368.j...
Ham makes EME contact with just 25 watts http://www.southgatearc.org/news/january2008/record_eme_contact.htm
The call book entry for Angus Young M0IKB can be seen at http://www.eham.net/callbook/M0IKB
73 Trevor M5AKA
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Not to take anything away from Angus, and Yes this is indeed a great accomplishment, but hardly from new.
Myself have done this many times with a tad bit more power, 35 to 40 watts. And this was in the days of no fancy software's or anything like that just antenna, rig, a nd good headphones.
I worked 18 different stations off Oscar 0 (Moon) back in the late 80's My station was a Kenwood TS-700, 10 watts into a Mirage 40 watt amp that was tired and only put out 35 or so watts. feed line was 1/2" heliax that was about 100 feet long, no Pre-amp for receive, antennas were 8 element yagis, W1JR design (4 of them)
standard WIDE SSB filters on receive, and a set of headphones. That's it.
One thing that DID make a HUGE difference I think on my system, was i was able by the design of my array I was able to rotate polarity of the beams along their axis. Granted, the spacing was optimum when they were horizontal, but and were wrong in other polarities, but the gain it made making sure the polarity was right after faraday happens was incredible. every 5 minutes or so i'd have to change the polarity to optimize the signal.
18 different stations in a little over 2 weeks or so of operating, who knows how many I could have worked, but will never know due to going qrt off the moon because a Kenwood TS-700 doesn't really like 110 VAC being applied to the 12VDC input.
Joe WB9SBD
Trevor wrote:
The story in the UK Scarborough Evening News about Angus Young M0IKB achieving Moonbounce with just 25 watts is a good illustration of the huge advances Amateurs have made in Moonbounce techniques over recent years. Not long ago it would have taken over 400 watts to achieve it.
Why Angus is over the Moon - Scarborough Today (with picture of Angus) http://www.scarborougheveningnews.co.uk/news/Why-Angus-is-over-the.3686368.j...
Ham makes EME contact with just 25 watts http://www.southgatearc.org/news/january2008/record_eme_contact.htm
The call book entry for Angus Young M0IKB can be seen at http://www.eham.net/callbook/M0IKB
73 Trevor M5AKA
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Hi Joe,
Glad to hear about your low power moonbounce, contacts at those power levels would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.
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
--- Joe nss@mwt.net wrote:
Not to take anything away from Angus, and Yes this is indeed a great accomplishment, but hardly from new.
Myself have done this many times with a tad bit more power, 35 to 40 watts. And this was in the days of no fancy software's or anything like that just antenna, rig, a nd good headphones.
I worked 18 different stations off Oscar 0 (Moon) back in the late 80's My station was a Kenwood TS-700, 10 watts into a Mirage 40 watt amp that was tired and only put out 35 or so watts. feed line was 1/2" heliax that was about 100 feet long, no Pre-amp for receive, antennas were 8 element yagis, W1JR design (4 of them)
standard WIDE SSB filters on receive, and a set of headphones. That's it.
One thing that DID make a HUGE difference I think on my system, was i was able by the design of my array I was able to rotate polarity of the beams along their axis. Granted, the spacing was optimum when they were horizontal, but and were wrong in other polarities, but the gain it made making sure the polarity was right after faraday happens was incredible. every 5 minutes or so i'd have to change the polarity to optimize the signal.
18 different stations in a little over 2 weeks or so of operating, who knows how many I could have worked, but will never know due to going qrt off the moon because a Kenwood TS-700 doesn't really like 110 VAC being applied to the 12VDC input.
Joe WB9SBD
Trevor wrote:
The story in the UK Scarborough Evening News about Angus Young M0IKB
achieving
Moonbounce with just 25 watts is a good illustration of the huge advances Amateurs have made in Moonbounce techniques over recent years. Not long ago
it
would have taken over 400 watts to achieve it.
Why Angus is over the Moon - Scarborough Today (with picture of Angus)
http://www.scarborougheveningnews.co.uk/news/Why-Angus-is-over-the.3686368.j...
Ham makes EME contact with just 25 watts http://www.southgatearc.org/news/january2008/record_eme_contact.htm
The call book entry for Angus Young M0IKB can be seen at http://www.eham.net/callbook/M0IKB
73 Trevor M5AKA
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It would be more significant if the antenna was described. I suspect if one used a 1000-foot dish it would be quite easy to do! The article mentions his working Gary in Ohio. That most likely is KB8RQ which runs a very large array of 2m yagis (I believe 32 of them). That helps a lot!
I have over 115 eme contacts on 2m running only 125w to four yagis. So if this ham is running a single yagi and 25w that IS a big achievement. But no mention of what antenna system is being used?
73 Ed - KL7UW
At 12:14 AM 1/28/2008, Trevor wrote:
The story in the UK Scarborough Evening News about Angus Young M0IKB achieving Moonbounce with just 25 watts is a good illustration of the huge advances Amateurs have made in Moonbounce techniques over recent years. Not long ago it would have taken over 400 watts to achieve it.
Why Angus is over the Moon - Scarborough Today (with picture of Angus) http://www.scarborougheveningnews.co.uk/news/Why-Angus-is-over-the.3686368.j...
Ham makes EME contact with just 25 watts http://www.southgatearc.org/news/january2008/record_eme_contact.htm
The call book entry for Angus Young M0IKB can be seen at http://www.eham.net/callbook/M0IKB
73 Trevor M5AKA
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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 dubususa@hotmail.com ======================================
On Jan 28, 2008, at 2:14 AM, Trevor wrote:
The story in the UK Scarborough Evening News about Angus Young M0IKB achieving Moonbounce with just 25 watts is a good illustration of the huge advances Amateurs have made in Moonbounce techniques over recent years. Not long ago it would have taken over 400 watts to achieve it.
Now now, we all know here that ERP is what counts... 25W into a massive array is still a massive RF signal.
This article is the typical watered-down type of thing you see in the press that doesn't have enough detail to really decide if they have an impressive accomplishment, or just someone pushing low power into an 8 antenna yagi array.
All it does is make us all wonder who and how even more... but I doubt you'll get many oohs and ahhs from this crowd until we see "the rest of the story"...
Tell me he did it with 25W into a vertical, I'll be impressed... REAL impressed. Then I'll be wondering how many stories high the vertical was, and how low to the horizon the moon was. (GRIN)
-- Nate Duehr, WY0X nate@natetech.com
Nate Duehr wrote:
Now now, we all know here that ERP is what counts... 25W into a massive array is still a massive RF signal.
Exactly, as well as "Total" system gain, and when i mean "Total" I mean of BOTH Stations. Yes I made a lot of contacts on the Moon, with my 4 X 8 ele array, and 35 watts. But if it was not for the HUGE stations at the other end Like W5UN, KB8RQ, VE7BQH, and the HUGE european stations, this would not have been possible.
Joe WB9SBD
participants (4)
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Edward Cole -
Joe -
Nate Duehr -
Trevor