Interests

EME

There is something special about having a QSO by bouncing signals off the moon. But the signals are weak & it takes time to get a setup that's good enough to make the trip. Below are some photos showing my EME journey so far:-

This photo is special for me because it shows my Az/El rotator mounted on the mast. Getting to this stage was tough for a non-techie where I had to interface my computer to the rotator to make it track the moon. The whole process wasn't helped by a very poor instruction manual & bad soldering on my part:-/

Not only am I not a gifted IT Engineer, but I found mounting the dish onto its mount surprisingly difficult. The solid dish weighed in at 75-100Kg & I opted for a wooden mount reckoning that if wooden ships were good enough for the early seafarers, it was good enough for me. So far it has held up well, & infact perhaps the slight flex helps to protect the rotator in high winds.

The dish loitered in my garden for over 2 years before I got round to putting it in its rightful place.

Placing the 1,296MHz Septum feed in position at the focal plane of the dish proved harder than expected. The whole spider contraption had a mind of its own, not helped by the fact that the dish is quite high off the ground. The Mk-I fell off:-0

Things started to move faster once the dish was "looking the part", & I received my 1st 23cm signal off the moon on the 12th of April 2019 from G4CCH. This was a grand achievement & served to add fuel to the fire of trying to get on the moon before the 50th lunar landing anniversary in July.

Here you can see the preamplifier in place & its protection relay. At this stage the relay was being switched manually & I had RX only.

My next big tech worry was making the 2 coaxial relays switch automatically & with the right delay. Worse than that, the whole process had to be triggered by my radio & I had to wrap in my power amplifier to the process as well. Get it wrong, & you blow up your sensitive preamplifier - something I did more than once! More accomplished radio hams relish the challenge of building a sequencer, but the prospect filled me with dread. In the end I bought one from M2 Antenna Systems Inc, & I must say that it truly is a fine bit of kit. The photo above was taken on the 18th of June & shows the setup TX ready but without a power amplifier (so about 5W at the feed).

I then had to wait until the power amplifier was delivered & then set it up on time for the 50th moon landing anniversary. Although the lunar module of Apollo 11 touched down on the Sea of Tranquility on the 20th of July 1969, it wasn't until the next day (European time)n that Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon - 02:39 UTC (or 22:39 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on the 20th). In the week leading up to the 21st I had my own frantic "race for space" trying to get on the air. And as luck would have it PI9CAM was around at just the right time to help me get a first QSO off the moon at 00:54 on 21st July 2019. I wouldn't have got a lot of points for style, but we made the trip. And later that morning I made further QSOs with OK1KIR & KA1GT. Fantastic!!!

Photo of dish taken just after my 2nd QSO with OK1KIR at 01:14 on the 21st of July 2019.

Setting the focal plane kit up every time in between Scottish showers proved tedious, & the above photo shows the dish sporting its new weather proofed & heated housing for the preamp & relay. This was a game changer in terms of convenience & meant I could even operate even when it was raining:-) (which is practically all the time in Scotland).

Above you can see the dish getting its mesh extension from 2.4m diameter to 3.6m using fibreglass arrows. This is the Mk-2, its predecessor having been more than a bit of a flop... The big improvement was mounting the arrows on the dish surface rather than at the sides. Top tip: leave some room for expanding your dish - even a relatively small increase in radius makes a big difference to surface area. My dish now has an f/D = 0.25, so probably can't be made much bigger, but you never know...

The above photo was taken from the centre of the dish looking out to the Septum feed. You can also see a prototype 2-ele beam for 70cm EME operation which I used to make my 1st 70cm EME QSO with DL7APV on the 24th of August 2020.

And below is my EME log showing the 1st 100 stations contacted via the moon (all on 1,296MHz). I suspect the next 100 may take a little longer to achieve!

HF DX

For many years I used a 3-element Cushcraft A3S beam at 15m agl to chase DX on 10m, 15m & 20m. The map below shows the countries worked over roughly 2014-2019.

I Also Like...

*80m/40m/2m ragchewing.

*2m SSB backpacking, DXing & aircraft scatter.

2m DXing on Tinto Hill - best DX on the day - Czechoslovakia (although I've since got quite a bit further!:-))

Radio Aspirations…

A bigger dish for Earth-Moon-Earth on 23cm & more power - to hear my echo & make SSB contacts!

Better CW:-/

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