Frank Dresser wrote:
Wouldn't a moonbounce setup, with high power and a steerable antenna, also
have tropo scatter capability? It wouldn't necessarly go the other way,
however. Equipment which works well enough for tropo scatter might not do
the moonbounce job.

[snip]

Again, what works for moonbounce ought to more than meet the standard for
satellite work.

The Liberty was said to have had moonbounce capability. I'd figure they
used that large parabolic antenna for that purpose. There's no obvious
reason they couldn't have used it for the less demanding tasks of tropo
scatter and satellite comms.

According to the usslibertyinquiry.com website (which has been off-line
lately), the Liberty did have moonbounce (aka: TRSSCOM) capablity. The
system consisted of an S band transmitter and receiver, and 16'
parabolic reflector antenna. The antenna was steerable. Also on
Liberty was a 10' parabolic antenna, on the forecastle. This was used
for satellite "communications research" and other SHF intercept work --
part of the SRR-20 multichannel receiver and recording system.

There is a bunch of reference information on the usslibertyinquiry.com
forum about Liberty's intercept and communications systems. But for
the past month the site has been down for maintenance. So, I'm unable
to point you to the place where I got the above info.