3 ms·
Twofold - minimum! First of all - many amateur radio operators take great interest in having been in contact with lots of countries and territories. Some are
by lb1lf 9y ago
Twofold - minimum!
First of all - many amateur radio operators take great interest in having been in contact with lots of countries and territories.
Some are trivial - I just checked, so far this year I’ve got some 80 German stations in my log - some are exceedingly rare (Like Bouvet. Or North Korea, as the authorities there have a less than enlightened stance on individuals communicating with the outside world.)
The din you’d hear if you tuned a radio receiver to a frequency used by the Bouvet exoedition would be similar to what you’d hear if you ventured into a stadium packed with tweens and yelled that you had tickets for a Bieber meet and greet to whoever wanted them the most - literally tens of thousands of operators calling them at once - some for the associated bragging rights, some for testing their station’s capabilities...
More specifically about the moonbounce thing - that is HARD; you blast as much power as you can get hold of into the biggest, most badass antenna you can afford, and then, if the stars align, the gods smile &c - your signal is strong enough to get reflected back to earth where someone else may hear it (if they, too, went through major inconveniences to hone their antenna badassery enough to pick up a gnat’s fart from half a million miles away.
There’s hardly any rational reason why one would do such a thing, but the sense of accomplishment once you nail it is indescribable.
- 24gttghh 9y ago>There’s hardly any rational reason why one would do such a thing, but the sense of accomplishment once you nail it is indescribable. Ah ha! Some people just have waaaay more money for their hobbies than I do.
- lb1lf 9y agoOh, it can easily be mindbogglingly expensive, but it can be done on a (relative) shoestring, too. (Though arguably, to some extent, going cheap just means you are leeching off someone else, as the guy at the other end will need a bigger everything to make the signal to noise ratio acceptable at both ends.) I've tried it a few times, out of pocket expense was way less than $1k - using software to generate smart modulation schemes like JT65b, you can get performance orders of magnitude better than what a human ear can pick up - leading to orders of magnitude less impressive - cough - stations. Costs were more or less like this: Computer - $0. (Already had one for other purposes) Software - $0. (Gotta love freeware!) Soundcard interface - $30 in parts Transceiver - $250 (Early nineties vintage) 150W solid-state amplifier, 2nd hand - $40, needed fixing. Low-loss feedline - $65, plus a couple of hours in the car to pick it up. Mast - $0 (Repurposed an old flagpole) Antenna - $180 (DIY 2x12 element yagis. Cost of materials) Now, this is a bare-bones setup - more power and more antenna would make life a lot easier. Also, it would be nice to be able to rotate the antennas (Now I just aim for where the moon will rise and wait for it to whizz by) However, it works. After a fashion.