Quick Tour of WD6DBM 2m Moonbounce (EME, or Earth-Moon-Earth) Station

This is a quickie tour of my EME station in operation during the 2011 ARRL EME Contest, second night. The front-end of my transverter blew out almost immediately so it was a bust. That's how it goes with moonbounce--you gotta want it bad.

Pictured is a Yaesu G5400 Rotor Control Box, ARR VDG144 Preamp, Elecraft XV-144 Transverter, Elecraft P3 Panadapter, Elecraft K3 Transceiver, WaveNode WN-2 Wattmeter, Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop running Windows XP, Henry Radio 2002A Linear Amplifier using a single 3CX800A7 ceramic tube with three additional cooling fans for EME operation, and a no-name cheapie DVM that I set up to monitor grid current since the Henry's grid-current meter is possessed by demons.

Outside are two Cushcraft 17B2 antennas with an M2 power divider and phasing harness, fed with 80 feet of 7/8" Heliax, all on a 15-foot mast bolted to the house for my neighbor's viewing pleasure.

For information on how YOU can do EME with a simple station, invite me to your club meeting for my exciting talk, "Moonbounce and Meteor Scatter for the Masses." -73, Eric WD6DBM

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ham radio
• moonbounce
• amateur radio
• WSJT
• EME
• VHF
• VHF weak signal
• 2 meters

[gliderboy1955]

Give us more!

[JockoFlocko]

Nice setup, I see you're using a Wavenode unit. I just installed one here as well in the shack and it's a great unit. Nice Henry Amp too :) 73 -VA3AWP

[jdizzy47]

Good stuff. Great equipment....