September 5, 2023
It's not everyday that somebody gives you the keys to their ne-plus-ultra 6M EME station and says, "Have fun!". As Paul Harvey would say, "Here's the rest of the story".
Once a year Lance, W7GJ goes off to a rare place, usually an exotic island, to do 6M moonbounce with a single long Yagi and a KW. This week he's on Rodrigues Island out in the Indian Ocean as 3B9GJ. Somebody has to go to his Stateside QTH and put the W7GJ home station on. Teacher, teacher pick me!
You need to understand Lance's home setup is a monster 4x 50 foot (15.25M) Yagis array and 1.5 KW - about as good as a 6M EME system gets. So each year Lance goes half way around the world and I go 3.5 hours west on the Interstate to Frenchtown. Thankfully, Lance gives me a 20 page check list so I can get the station up and running correctly.
This year was extra spicy as our mutual moon window to make the contact was exactly 55 minutes. Faraday rotation be damned! At least we both had ground gain - DXpedition Lance was enjoying a a moonrise over salt water, while his home station was racing moonset. We nailed it! I started seeing his signal when his moon was +0.5 degrees. Lance's portable station was a solid -20 during the four minutes the contact took using Q65-A and pile-up mode.
I've been doing this annual pilgrimage for about 10 years and I'm proud to say that I've been able to maintain a perfect batting average ... so far.
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| W7GJ 2m EME array in the foreground, 6M array in the rear. |
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| 3B9GJ - Lance's Yagi looking at his first moonrise of the DXpedition. |