Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
From: Dee Flint on Dec 15, 3:21 pm
"Bill Sohl" wrote in message

Actually the place that I see the difference in operating skills is on the
VHF bands in the VHF contests. When I review my contacts in those contests,
the large majority of them are Extra class operators. They seem to be the
ones to have the skill necessary to put together and operate a station
suitable to make long distance VHF contacts and the skill to do so.

Wow! Someone should have TOLD the U.S. Army Signal Corps folks
at Evans Signal Laboratory in 1946 when they were the first to
bounce a radio signal off the moon!

How much power was used by the Army?

The transmitter used was a modified SCR-271 radar unit. It produced
3000 W on 111.5 Mc. (that's what the Signal Corps called them
back then). Pair of 6C21 triodes in the output - they look similar to
1000Ts.

3000 W output with those tubes at that frequency means about 5000 W
input.
The amateur power limit back then was 1000 W input.

How large was the antenna?

64 dipoles in front of a plane reflector. At least 24 dB gain over
isotropic.

There's a lot more info at:

http://www.campevans.com/diana.html

btw, it was a moon RADAR experiment, not a communications system.

The mode used was OOK CW. The echoes were heard as beeps. Had there
been
a second station, communication could have been done by Morse Code.

But no Morse Code was used because no communication was done. There was
no second station to communicate with.

Those Diana folks had a some hams involved, though - all code tested at
at
least 13 wpm:

Lt. Col John H. DeWitt, officer-in-charge, W4ERI, ex-W4FU

E.K. Stodola, head of the lab's Research Section, W3IVF

F. Elacker, Mechanical Engineer, ex-W2DMD

H.P.Kaufmann, W2OQU was also involved at a high level.

Those are just the hams I know of that were involved. There were
probably more.

Note that a good number of the top people were radio amateurs.

They used power levels 9 dB above those permitted to amateurs at the
time, and
an antenna that was quite beyond "backyard construction". They had lots
of
resources.

Lt. Col. DeWitt, W4ERI, was the driving force behind the whole idea,
which he
first began working on in 1940.

Hams
are now doing moonbounce wherein one of the stations is using a modest
50 MHz yagi and 100w or so.

A few years back, a couple of hams (both code-tested, at least one
an Extra) did microwave EME with less than
100 W and dishes less than 10 feet in diameter - at both ends. Using
their own resources.

Yeah, they should have told the Signal Corps "how to do it" in
Korea in the 1950s when they set out all that VHF radio relay
equipment in the hills and valleys there.

Where WAS the ARRL when all that was going on? They didn't tell
the Signal Corps much of anything...

Where Worked All States? During WWII, the Signal Corps used the ARRL
Handbook, Leonard. I'll bet that chafes you to no end.

The ARRL actually produced a special "Defense Edition" Handbook
for training purposes.

There's also the story of "The Ghost of Guam".

73 de Jim, N2EY