Motorcycle Moonbounce

[Steve Wilson]

Hey Gerhard,

Now that summer is almost over, how did your EME experiments go? I
assume you knew the times when the moon was visible to you and your
partner. How did you communicate with your friend to set things up?

I assume you both knew the doppler offset frequencies. Did you have
them precalculated or did you do the calculations in real time? What
mode did you use? Plain CW? What would happen if it rained? could
you still aim the antenna? What S/N did you get?

I'm sure there are a lot more questions to ask. Do you plan on
describing your trip on your web site?

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 01.09.19 um 02:41 schrieb Steve Wilson:

Hey Gerhard,

Now that summer is almost over, how did your EME experiments go? I
assume you knew the times when the moon was visible to you and your
partner. How did you communicate with your friend to set things up?

I assume you both knew the doppler offset frequencies. Did you have
them precalculated or did you do the calculations in real time? What
mode did you use? Plain CW? What would happen if it rained? could
you still aim the antenna? What S/N did you get?

I'm sure there are a lot more questions to ask. Do you plan on
describing your trip on your web site?

Oh, that's still far away. Not this year. I was in southern France
this summer, not with the bike but with my daughter and the car.
Lucky me. Both for my daughter and the air conditioning of the
car. We hit the peak of the heat wave at 46°C. Southern France and the
neighboring dwarf states are really the area of interest for the
the first tries.

I have started to build the transverter; I have digged out that SKY
phemt amplifier SKY 67150-396LF. My first design had a noise figure
of 2.5 dB and not 0.35 dB as promised. I did not deviate much from the
data sheet design; my HP346 noise head is now on tour to compare it
with other people's noise sources. It seems, the head is innocent.
If everything fails I'll have it calibrated at Keysight. When I bought
it, the cal table was missing :-(

I managed to buy the one and only SKY demo board at DK in the mean time.
If that does not hold specs, then I don't know what would.

On the other hand, the TDK/EPCOS 432 MHz SAW filters are the pure joy.
3*3 mm and the complete solution to selectivity.

Someone here proposed a large RF power transistor (150W@432 or so).
I got one and I'm trying to learn ADS with it. That costs me some
good will points with a customer. Thou shallst not do your hobby
projects but work overtime for us. ;-)

I'll leave the sked data to my friend. He has more experience.
Doppler used not to be a problem at our club station at the Technical
Univ Berlin with the Drake R4C 30 years ago. When it's cloudy and
the moon is not visible --> probably no QSO. But my cell phone has
a compass and nice rendering of current sun, moon and planets positions.

cheers, Gerhard

 

[Steve Wilson]

Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> wrote:

Am 01.09.19 um 02:41 schrieb Steve Wilson:
Hey Gerhard,

Now that summer is almost over, how did your EME experiments go? I
assume you knew the times when the moon was visible to you and your
partner. How did you communicate with your friend to set things up?

I'm sure there are a lot more questions to ask. Do you plan on
describing your trip on your web site?

Oh, that's still far away. Not this year. I was in southern France
this summer, not with the bike but with my daughter and the car.
Lucky me. Both for my daughter and the air conditioning of the
car. We hit the peak of the heat wave at 46°C. Southern France and the
neighboring dwarf states are really the area of interest for the
the first tries.

I have started to build the transverter; I have digged out that SKY
phemt amplifier SKY 67150-396LF. My first design had a noise figure
of 2.5 dB and not 0.35 dB as promised. I did not deviate much from the
data sheet design; my HP346 noise head is now on tour to compare it
with other people's noise sources. It seems, the head is innocent.
If everything fails I'll have it calibrated at Keysight. When I bought
it, the cal table was missing :-(

I managed to buy the one and only SKY demo board at DK in the mean time.
If that does not hold specs, then I don't know what would.

On the other hand, the TDK/EPCOS 432 MHz SAW filters are the pure joy.
3*3 mm and the complete solution to selectivity.

Someone here proposed a large RF power transistor (150W@432 or so).
I got one and I'm trying to learn ADS with it. That costs me some
good will points with a customer. Thou shallst not do your hobby
projects but work overtime for us. ;-)

I'll leave the sked data to my friend. He has more experience.
Doppler used not to be a problem at our club station at the Technical
Univ Berlin with the Drake R4C 30 years ago. When it's cloudy and
the moon is not visible --> probably no QSO. But my cell phone has
a compass and nice rendering of current sun, moon and planets positions.

cheers, Gerhard

Awsome. Thanks