Moonbounce on 1296 MHz
#19
This weekend was part of the ARRL moonbounce contest, and there were lots of stations on.
I was up at 1 am sunday morning and 2am this morning to work the American window, and from 30 degrees down to moonset on friday warm up then saturday and sunday morning for russia, europe etc, england.
The cw end of the band from 1296.000 to 1296.040 was full of signals, sometimes several cw traces within a few hundred hertz of each other, especially around 1296.020 to 022.
The CW ops run lots of power, so small stations over here should be able to see them on the wsjt waterfall or spectran etc.
Big stations like HB9Q will gladly get on air for a sked for small yagi stations here, and you Will get his signal ! Have a google.

For the digital operators there were a long list of stations sitting in the HB9Q.CH logger, so no shortage of signals to look for.
Nearly all the digital stations I worked could have been worked with a 2 metre or 2.5 metre scrounged dish set up in your backyard.

Stations worked : NA : CW n4pz, wa6py, kl6m alaska. Digital were n5bf, wa3gfz, k2uyh, wa3rgq, w6yx, va7mm, kn0ws, va6eme.
EU : CW G4CCH, OK1DL. Digital HB9Q, sp5gdm, rw0ldf, g4bao, la3eq, with iz5tep, i5ydi, df2vj, df3ru and ok1il before contest
Oceania CW JA6AHB

You can do this too, and there are plenty of stations all around the world that reckon VK is rare dx. Moonset dogpiles for VK are common on large activity weekends like the one just gone.

You dont need fancy computer tracking and a mechanical nightmare if you set your radio and a laptop near the dish. Just aim manually and keep adjusting regularly.
73 Dave vk2jds
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