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Moonbounce
Radio communication over a distance of at least 2 light-seconds using the Moon as reflector.
Contact	OE4DNS, AndiS, OE1RFC, datacop
People	AndiS, Datacop, Herbert, Marc, Nikola, Pk, Zem
Village	LeiwandVille, HamVillage‎

Radio communication over a distance of at least 2 light-seconds using the Moon as reflector.

(If you are trying to find us just look out for the big 2 stacked antennas, they can't be overlooked)

About

Moon bounce, also known as EME (Earth-Moon-Earth), is a communication technique that allows two earth-based radio stations to communicate directly by using the moon as passive reflector. It is the longest communications path two stations on Earth can use to communicate directly with each other.

We are not the first people doing EME, so we're fairly sure we won't blow up the moon (we're not using any really strong lasers).

Project Moonbounce is a Project done by the members of MetaFunk, the Amateur-radio group of the Vienna-based hackerspace Metalab, in cooperation with Chaoswelle. It is a part of LeiwandVille.

Talk

There is a Talk about the Project on Saturday 12:00 in the Kourou Shelter [1]

Setup

Most EME communications are on the 2 meter (144-146MHz ITU region 1) amateur radio band.

We will be using two horizontal stacked 5m long yagi antennas on an about 6m high antenna mast. We are using a 2m high-power linear power amplifier for transmitting and a low noise amplifier (LNA) to amplify the received signals.

sketch

                                                                                     _
 				       __\-o\-\-\-\-\				  /.    \
 				      /   /					 |    O  |
 			  [LNA]-[R]---O  #					  \ o_  /
 			    |    |    \ /|					  
 			    |	 |   \-o-|\-\-\-\-\				
 			    |	 |	 |		
 			    |	 |	|-		
 			    |	 |	||		
 			    |	 |	||		
 			    |	 |	||		
 			___/	 |	||		
  ____	 _____	      /		 |	|#	
 | PC | | TRX |o-----[R]--[PA]---+	|	
 |____|-|_____|			   ____/ \____			(cc-by-sa oe1rfc, oe4dns)


 key:
 TRX	2m Transceiver
 LNA	Low Noise Amplifier
 PA	Power Amplifier
 R	Coaxial Relay

Photo

History

First developments in using the moon as passive repeater have been made in the early 1950s by the United States Navy. It was ment to be a reliable communication method for two radio stations which were unable to communicate by shortwave radio because of bad propagation.

It's military and commercial use became obsolete with the deployment of artificial satellites.

Miscellaneous

With this setup slightly modified it is also possible to do satellite/ISS communication, we might do this the other half of the day.

QSO log

Until Sun, 14th August 2011 we have been heard from all over the Northern Hemisphere but were not able to decode more than some short burst. So no 2-way QSO due to QRM yet. It's a success anayway - setup is working and we will try again tonight.