Mobile EME

[kg4kww]

This article is listed on the ARRL Home Page.
Click On Link and then scroll down until you come to the article. This is cool.

Martin’s moonmobile on the roll (http://www.arrl.org)

[kg4kww]

This is really cool. Are any of you going to give it a shot?

[N5BO]

I don't plan on doing mobile EME, but I look forward to trying EME from home in the years to come.

[n5tjd]

I live about 1.9 air miles from one of his contacts listed at the ARRL site. W5UN has an impressive antenna farm and an even more impressive EME array. I don't know the dimensions, but it is very large. I like to slow down and take in the beauty every time I drive by. I have a friend that lives across the road from him.

[kd7eze]

That's an interesting setup, although hard to navigate with that long-boom yagi on the roof. I don't have the funds for a real EME setup, either mobile or QTH. I do however have a mobile satellite station that works quite well. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[K3UD]

I don't know about mobile EME but I do know of at least two hams in the 60s who claimed to have worked mobile meteor scatter while in motion.
(the late W3MFY and the late K3CZI)

73
George
K3UD

[WB2WIK]

Hi George K3UD,

I remember Pres W3MFY well. He was a great VHFer and VHF promoter. Used to frequent his "Trevose Hamtronics" store, maybe drop in once a month or so when I was in the area.

Pres' big tower was the best example of putting something huge on a very small suburban lot that I've ever seen. I think he had maybe 1/4 acre of property, with a 120' tall self-supporting tower whose base was so wide it occupied half his yard. That's a real dedicated ham!

As for "mobile EME," it's been done many times, going back many years. My old friend Wayne N6NB was working EME mobile, with the stories and results well documented in the pages of QST magazine, back in the 1970s. "Cabover Kilowatt" and "Boondoggle to Alaska" (or something like that) come to mind. Wayne had one easy-to-deploy 2m EME array that was, if I recall, made of sixteen homebrew quads on a mobile tower trailer. It could be assembled and "up" in just minutes after parking, and he could rotate the entire array not only for elevation and azimuth, but also around itself on a common axis so he could continuously change polarity (horizontal through vertical, and everything between) of the array to counter the effects of Faraday shift.

He drove that from L.A. to Alaska and back to put KL7 on the air for moonbouncers before any active moonbounce station lived in Alaska.

No substitute for dedication and being completely wacky!

WB2WIK/6

[K0RGR]

That's a pretty minimal moonbounce setup. It's amazing that he could work even W5UN with it. However, others are doing moonbounce with stations of that class using some of the new digital modes. Ditto meteor scatter. One fellow in town is doing meteor scatter on 2 with an indoor antenna in the garage of his condo.

[WA2ZDY]

I sure do remember Pres myself. I frequented the Trevose store plenty when I was younger. It was often the destination for a Saturday ride with the radio club too.

I bought my second brand new rig there: an Icom IC2AT that is still around here somewhere and last time I tried it, it worked. That was in August 1981.

Was Pres the guy who had the pistol on his hip? I know one of them did, but not clear now on who.

[K3UD]

Pres was, at one time a process server and I guess he made some people mad along the way. I had also heard that he did a stint as a bail bondsman.

He also had a lot of problems with his neighbors and local authorities concerning his 120 foot self supporting tower on his small suburban lot. I visited his QTH a few times and his tower and shack had to be seen to be believed. I seem to remember his tower being in the front yard. I don't think I ever saw him carrying a pistol, but my contact with him started in the mid to late 60s and ended in about 1973.

On the other hand, as far as ham radio was concerned, he was a great guy. I know that at one point he would give away old gear he took in trade to new novices.

I was operating a VHF sweepstakes with my friend Bill K3ZSG (now W0RSJ) and we were using a Tempo 2 meter kilowatt output amp. Somehow on saturday night we damaged the 8873 tube did not have a spare, and continued operating the contest barefoot.

Pres, who was also operating came up on frequency sometime later and asked what had happened to our signal. We told him and told us to come by his QTH and he would find us another tube. He opened up the store and got one from new stock. While I don't think we cold have beat Pres in the VHF SS, we were certainly competitive.

Anyone know when he actually closed the Ham store operation at Trevose? I know he was running ads in the ham mags in the early 80s but heard that it eventually turned into a Service America TV repair shop run by a relative until it went broke.

73
George
K3UD

[WA2ZDY]

The last time I was in the store and had any contact with them as a ham store was in the mid 1990s. I remember buying a scanner frequency book there of all things. N2FVV and I were down at Willie Grover NAS and we stopped into Trevose.

In fact, until your post about it closing, I wasn't sure they weren't still selling ham gear there. Oh well, time passes on.

[nz3m]

I have talked to Martin a few times. He is always mobile, he never told me what antenna he was using http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

As far as EME with W5UN, he could probably hear you if you went outside and yelled at the moon. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif (ever hear of "The Mighty Big Array"?)

Dave

[K3UD]

Chris,

I thought it had closed well before the 90s.

Could you possibly be thinking about Hambuerger? They were quite close to Willow Grove NAS and were still open in the late 90s but catering to the CB and Scanner crowd more so than the ham trade.

They had several locations over the years and I purchased my first transmitter from them when they were located in Wyncote in 1964.

Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me... would not be the first time http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

73
George
K3UD

[W0UZR]

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/12/15/1/KC3RE-EME-1-lrg.jpg
And they're actually going to go down the road with that and not expect to be pulled over?

[nz3m]

Quote[/b] (kb0uzr @ Dec. 16 2004,23:21)]And they're actually going to go down the road with that and not expect to be pulled over?
It's OK, he has a ham "license". Just show it to the policeman, and tell him to carry on. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Dave

[W0UZR]

Just show the cop and tell Him to carry on? I think this guy has a lot more "Carring" to do.

If the wind comes up good enough, he's going to dump right over on his side.....