Moon Bounce out of the Boot

September 28th, 2019

On the annual service day of the DARC districts Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate I had the pleasure to hold a lecture about EME basics and how to get into. Afterwards I invited the audience to try a live moon bounce QSO on 432 MHz from the parking lot outside. I had prepared some standard equipment of the kind, many might have in their shacks:

  • Transceiver Yaesu FT-897
  • 15-Element Yagi (YU7EF )
  • PA Gemini 70, ca. 200 W
  • LNA SHF-Elektronik, 0,8 dB NF
EME rig in the boot, Photo by courtesy of Klaus, DF6WN

Unfortunately it was rainy outside, the moon close to the sun and a G2 solar storm in progress. When swithing on the transceiver, I noticed some quite massive local QRM. Nevertheless I contacted Bernd, DL7APV, who had agreed in a sked, by phone, to tell him about the noise and that we were ready to go.

Bernd´s array of 128 x 11 elemnt yagis during a barbeque last June

As the noise level went up and down and Bernd is one of the big guns on 70 cm, we were able to decode most of his transmissions despite all adversities. Finally we completed the QSO. That was a great job, Bernd!

I enjoyed to be in Saarbrücken and would like to say thank you to Eugen, DK8VR and his team for organising DST 2019!