• Radio signals are beamed towards the moon and reflected back to the earth
• EME has been tested sucessfully on all amateur radio bands from 50MHz to 24GHz.

• most important: a good receiving system which includes the antenna design, the preamplifier, the connection between antenna and preamplifier, the receiver itself and the "human factor" (training to detect weak signals)
• enough antenna gain
• enough transmittimg power
• patience

• Get a software to calculate the position of the moon (azimuth/elevation), e.g. the "good old" VK3UM-moon-planner (download from SM2CEW's homepage)
• If the moon is closed to the sun or in front of the milky way: forget EME (high background noise). If the moon is near the apogee you will loose 2dB of signal strengh compared to the optimum (the orbit of the moon is an ellipse. Thus the distance from the center of the earth to the moon varies between about 355000 and 400000km).
• Point your antenna towards the moon (this is the bright ball of rocks and mud which circles around the earth in about 28 days...)
• Listen for other stations in the lowest regions of the bands, e.g. 144.000MHz to 144.030MHz; 432.000 to 432.030MHz or arrange skeds
• Especially on 432MHz and up keep the doppler shift in mind! It will be highest positive on moon rise when you get closer to the moon and highest negaive close to moon set. EME-softwares caculate the doppler shift

• Apart from new procedures such as JT44 (communication between or of computers?) generally low speed cw- i.e. below 100lpm- is used. SSB can only be used between "big guns"

• yes and no. No, if you just want to test this propagation a few times- see above. Yes, if you want to build up a "competitive" station. But the meaning of "competitive" must be defined by the individual operator...
• Keep in mind that the moon covers just 0.5 degrees of the sky, a small area compared to a 3dB-beam with of 15° of an avearge EME antenna (144MHz). That means, most of the tx power will miss the moon.
• The moon is everything else than an ideal reflector. The surface is dry, consists of rocks and mud (metal or an ocean would be much better). That means most of the power will be absorbed.
• Apart from that, the extinction due to different phases of the reflected signals causes further losses.
• As a result, it may sound as a miracle that is possible to succeed anyway

• Depending on the definition of "competitive". Some guidelines for the most common bands:
• Full elevation capability of the antenna
• 144MHz/2m - 4 yagis 3wl (wavelenght/"lambda")/6m boom; tx: 500W
• 432MHz/70cm - 4 yagis 8wl/6m boom; tx: 500W; open wire feeder and cavity preamplifiers recommended
• 1296MHz/23cm - 3m dish; tx 300W; cirular polarisaton and cavitiy preamplifier essential

• The only criteria is the visibility of the moon at the location of the participating stations. It is easy to calculate that the maximum range is almost 18000km (surface distance, the signal path will be about 800000km).
• Numerous stations already worked the WAC via EME.
• A major problem is the polarisation. Terrestial antennes with horizontal polarisation in the USA and Europe produce almost rectangular polarisation difference. However, fortunately the polarisation is shifted when the signal passes through the ionosphere of the earth on 2m and 70cm. On 23cm and on shorter wavelenghts the shift is smaller but on these bands circular polarisation is used.
• Skeds can be arranged via e-mail, phone, etc. (station index by DL4EBY), on the VHF-net (HF, 14345), on wwconvers (channel 14345).

EME is still a challange. The higher the fequency the greater this challenge becomes. Normally, to produce enough transmittion power is a matter of budget. To build a good receiving system is a matter of creativity, experience etc. On 432MHz and above the receiver is the key to success. More information here (Language: German, an article for the Austrian ham radio magazine "qsp", year 2000).