V73AX EME Effort Pays Off

By Dave Fortin V73UX
September 2004

Recently the Kwajalein Amateur Radio Club made 3 successful EME (Earth-moon-earth) contacts on 2 meters! I am not 100% sure if it was the first EME QSO from the Marshall Islands, but I doubt there have been many!

Dave Schmocker, KJ9I , talked me into doing this maybe 6 months ago. Actually, I had seen the plans for a "rope ladder yagi" in a couple places and people were using them for moonbounce. We also happened to have received a 300W amplifier for 2 meters from Johnston atoll. So, for about $100 we could build an antenna and give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised at the interest and involvement from the members of the KARC!

When I arrived on Kwaj almost 7 years ago there were only 3 or 4 of us that ever showed up at the club. I am not one for counting, but I'd say we probably got 8 - 10 folks together each time as we built and tested the antenna! We have had a significant increase in club activity in recent
years!

The antenna building went well. It's actually fairly simple. Richard Perry did the fancy machining on the driven element and that came out great! Gene Savage worked the balun and getting it tuned.

Anyway, our first attempt was on 8/14/2004 at 1750Z. That's 0550L on Kwaj!
Again, I didn't take a head count, but we had roughly 10 folks at the ham shack at 0430L to help setup. Coffee and goodies were there waiting (Thanks Ivy, Susan, Gary and Jack - I hope I got everyone there). So was the rain!

By the time we were putting up the antenna we were in a total downpour! We figured if the SWR was okay we were going to just give it a shot. If I remember correctly, the SWR was around 1.7:1 which was higher than the 1.3:1 we had the week before. I'd have to check with Jeff, but I think as the sked time approached the rain had stopped and I believe that the SWR may have improved a bit.

We coordinated everything though Dave Schmocker (KJ9I). We tried him first. I think we were all shocked when we head CW coming through the speakers! Jeff Parker was listening on headphones, but we had a pair of powered computer speakers so that the rest of us could listen. We were able to complete 3 QSOs that morning! We worked KJ9I, KB8RQ (I'm pretty sure that's the right call) and W5UN. As we tried for our 4th contact conditions faded and we were unable to complete it. (Given the fixed position of our antenna the moon was probably moving out of the beam and I suspect we were losing our "magic gain" of pointing out to the horizon over water.) We were trying to work VE7BQH which would have been a nice touch, since the rope ladder yagi was built from his design! We'll just have to get him next time!

So below you can see some e-mail that exchanged this weekend between Dave and myself. There are a bunch of stations that want to work us and I suspect that the list will grow as we approach the next favorable window which should be Sept 11/12. I think that for the North American stations we will setup at the ham shack. I'll have to see what the azimuth will be on those dates. I'm sure the antenna will have to point in a different direction, so we may have to be creative on setting up the antenna. As you can see below, there is also interest from Europe. Again, I'll have to run the moonrise/moonset predictions, but I think we are talking about a moonset azimuth in the 290 deg range. We need to find a location where we can string up our 100' yagi and hopefully be indoors with the radio. Maybe a couple of us can ride around one day and look for a good location. If anyone has a potential location in mind, please let me know.

I want to thank all the KARC members for their help! A lot of folks really pitched in and contributed which was great! I think this has been a great club project. I hope that we can make the most of the very limited days of favorable conditions that are coming up. I'd suggest that we keep going with CW. Setting up to catch the moonrise is fairly easy at the ham shack. If we could setup to the west, that would be great! Then, the next step would be trying to work JT65! That should open the door and allow us to potentially work more/smaller stations.

Thanks again to everyone for their help! I know we made at least 3 EMEers happy and we have probably caused a bit of excitement in the EME community!

Great stuff!