There was an ATT commercial Tropo link from Florida Keys to Cuba for
years. 900 MHz I think. The huge dishes (a pair) were standing for years
off Card Sound road. Probably gone now. I wish I had thought to play
radio using the feed point. Probably great 2 meter tropo DX on the ham band!

Tropo is probably harder than Moonbounce. That's one of the reasons
there was no civilian use of Tropo. Amateurs were using 1 Kw in the
1950's in the 6 meter band. Admitted very limited bandwidth, but
Tropo needs tens of kilowatts.

I don't doubt the antenna was capable of Moonbounce, but by the mid
1960's, there wasn't a good reason to use Moonbounce any longer. The
geometry had to line up, so you might have wait a long time (12 hours
or more if you were unlucky), whereas a Sat was almost guaranteed to
come into view in a few hours, and if the military had bought capacity
on Syncom (and I have no idea if they did or didn't), they wouldn't
have to wait at all...





--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"

The Lost Deep Thoughts By: Jack Handey
Before a mad scientist goes mad, there's probably a time
when he's only partially mad. And this is the time when he's
going to throw his best parties.