Interest Groups
Moon Bounce
Nope, it's not a dance craze!
A small group of our members are interested in receiving signals reflected from the surface of the moon. Why? It's one of those, "because it's there," things.
In 1946, a radio amateur in the US Army bounced a radar signal off the moon to prove that radio signals could penetrate the earth's ionosphere. The discovery was critical to space exploration in the decades afterwards, and other amateurs have been attracted to its challenge ever since.
Moon bounce (or EME, Earth-Moon-Earth) communications can be achieved with surprisingly simple equipment, after some study about how it is done. A relatively-inexpensive VHF radio, a highly-directional antenna (which is often home-built), and a computer are the basics, along with the "passive reflector" of the moon, of course.
Many amateurs with this interest start out by listening for their own signal. Radio waves travel at very near the speed of light, but the moon is not as close as it sometimes seems. Amateurs transmit a signal towards the moon, and have to wait about three seconds to hear it come back after travelling to the moon, being reflected by it, and returning to earth.
Once the EME adventurer has received his/her own signal, attempting communications with others is usually next.
Often, amateurs carefully coordinate their activity with others to increase the odds that they will be able to exchange messages with the weakly-reflected signals. However they sometimes get "lucky" by knowing the best conditions and getting the most out of their equipment to randomly contact others with the same interest.
For most of them, though, the fun is as much in the learning and the challenge as it is in making a contact.
There are many facets to the amateur radio hobby, and this is but one of them. If moon bounce / EME sounds like an interesting challenge, come and meet some of the people in our club who have done it. Come out to one of our meetings or contact us via our Contact Us page.
