2 meter EME moon bounce

[AG6IP]

Hi! I was wondering what freq to list for EME 2 meter moon bounce? Also, I had a question on tracking the moon. I have a AZ/EZ set up and I use ham radio deluxe or Nova to track the moon but when I track it automatically the AZ degrees is off. When I go out and look at the antenna it is pointing to the right AZ but the moon is a few degrees to the right of the antenna. Basically, that antenna is not pointed to the moon directly. Is that normal? My coordinates are right in ham radio deluxe and Nova. I would like to hear any inputs. Thanks.

Mike AG6IP

[WB3BEL]

EME CW activity is mostly below 144.100. WJST is from 144.10X to around 144.160 MHz.

If you have a small antenna listening using WSJT is more likely to result in success. You can see who is calling CQ when the moon is up and active spotting stations are on the moon by looking at this website:

http://www.livecq.eu/

Also people make schedules or announce their CQ frequency on this site :

http://www.chris.org/cgi-bin/jt65emeA

If you have a good yagi with a boomlength of > 10 feet and live where there is not a lot of interference you should be able to successfully decode EME WSJT from the superstations. If you have 100W or so of transmit power, you probably can work some of these stations as well.

As far as your antenna being not perfectly pointed, this is likely due to the fact that your location is not correctly entered into your tracking program. Or even more likely that your antenna is not aligned so that it points N when the rotor is set to N. You have to take into consideration declination if you align the rotor with a compass. If your antenna is small, being off a few degrees is not much of a problem. If the antenna beamwidth is 30 degrees wide a few degrees is only a minor loss of signal. If you have a huge antenna array the pointing accuracy is more critical.

Good luck. EME has become a lot easier with the free WSJT software.

http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjt.html

Many stations have the equipment and it really is a huge satisfaction to send your signal all the way to the moon and back!!!