A nice announcement from the ARRL about WA3LBI and VK7MO working 18949Km on 10GHz EME using WSJT-x mode of QRA64d. http://www.arrl.org/news/new-10-ghz-earth-moon-earth-world-record-set
There is a typo in the ARRL announcement as far as the USA Grid is concerned. The correct grids are FM28LO01VE and OF76NK00MB if we take them to the 10th digit. There are two different calculation methods used between VK record and the R1 records. The VK method yields 18949.4 Km whilst the R1 calculation works out at 18951 Km. Due to IARU Region 1 VHF record's recommended calculationbased on the International Ellipsoid of 1924 (polar radius 6356.912 km, equatorial radius 6378.388 km), the precise QRB should be 18951 km +-30,9m. Thank you OK1TEH for the explanation of the different calculation methods. But as you said "great work indeed!!" I think only 2m has a longer distance worked on EME but please correct me on that if I am wrong. Paul N2EME
Just to answer the question... EME'ers seek to use dishes with beams slightly larger than the Moon's angular diameter, which is about half a degree. The 3dB beam (degrees) of a dish is about ((57.3) x 1.2 ) /dish diameter in waves This dish shown is roughly 2m (may be a bit smaller), and 10GHz is 0.03 m wavelength, so the dish is roughly 70 wavelengths in diameter, yielding roughly >1 degree beamwidth. IOW, using a huge dish at 10 GHz for EME would over resolve the Moon and throw away using the entire 'mirror' for reflection. Cool record When Grote Reber, W9GFZ built the first 'radio astronomy' dish, he built it to be a 1/2 degree beam for moonbounce. But his RX was too noisy, he failed at moonbounce, and started passive RX measurements instead. Thus radio astronomy was truly born (picking up where Jansky left off). Less than a decade later, Project Diana succeeded at moonbounce. 73 Chip W1YW
Chip the dish that WA3LIB is stood by is a 2.4m dish with about 0.5 degree beam width if I recall correctly.
Hmmm... The pic makes the dish look smaller than that Is the ham (WA3LBI) a giant? Angular size of dish approximately angular size of man in pic. Man about 1.8 meters. 1.8 meters not equal 2.4 meters Can someone resolve this paradox? (pun intended)
DL0SHF 10GHZ EME beacon. For those of you who have some smaller 10GHz dishes and want to see what you can hear off the moon please remember that there is a 10GHz EME beacon off the moon. There is also info out there on using a small satellite TV dish and a RTL SDR RX with software such as SDR Console v3 to receive the beacon. If you look on the N4EME Rovers web page emerovers.com there are some links as well as more pictures of Jims dish. A fun project for the kids. Paul
Chip he is a Bloody big Paddy and had difficulty getting his size 16 shoes in and out of the operating van!!
