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October 24th 05, 09:38 AM

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:33:19 GMT, (Mark Zenier)
wrote:

In article , SR wrote:
The last few evening the moon was almost full and the evening sky was
fairly clear here in New York. I then transmitted on my CB but no DX
only locals.

I read something somewhere that mention about Moon Bouncing. Meaning
that a signal can travel far. But I am not sure if that is true.

It's a VHF and microwave thing. You actually illuminate the Moon
with enough power that another station back on Earth can pick up
the reflection. But that requires an antenna that can focus most
of your power on the Moon, a target only 1/2 degree across. Hams,
with 1 kilowatt, can get morse code and slow digital signals (on the
higher bands).

Back in the 60s or so, there was a TV program where a panel
was supposed to guess a guest's secret. For one guest, they said that
there was a special condition -- the guest's answer to a question
would be delayed a number of seconds. The secret was that the answer
was being moon-bounced.

Before satellites the Defense Department was able to send several
teletype channels at at time, maritime mobile. That was with a big dish
and probably 10's of kilowatts. (The best description of using that
equipment, that I've seen, was in a description of the incident where the
USS Liberty, the radio intelligence ship, was attacked by the Israelis.
In the Atlantic Monthly about 10-15 years ago, as I remember).

Mark Zenier
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)