MOONBOUNCE: the greatest challenge in Amateur Radio !

This page is a small and personal contribution to the existing knowledge and experience on moonbounce

Moonbounce which is also known as EME (Earth Moon Earth) is a way of making radio contact on VHF and higher
frequencies using the moon as a passive reflector !

To make world-wide contacts, on frequencies where this is normally not possible, is a real technical challenge !
This site offers a brief description of my station and my personal experience

The equipment:

Here is a short description of the equipment I use to make EME contacts

You can use a less equiped station and smaller antennas to gain good results but you need to work even harder...
Using digital modes instead of cw seems to work well with less equipment

Antennas:

Here are some pictures of my antennas as I started in 1997 and I have nowadays

I started in 1997 with 4x12el M2 antennas with 70cm and 23cm antennas inside
Later I removed the 70cm and 23cm aerials to improve reception
Seperated cables for TX and RX were added
Summer 2003 the system was rebuild to 6x12el M2 antennas

Initials

On this page you will find the initial (first) contacts that I made with this mode

Note that all these contacts were made with cw !

Contacts with digital modes as JT44/JT65 are mentioned separately

Links

Here you will find some links to other websites with good and comprehensive information
on moonbounce and relative issues