Trees
To communicate using the Moon as a reflector, the Moon must be visible to both stations. The upper map shown Moon illumination at Moonrise in my area. The lower map shows Moon illumination at Moonset. As you can see, I can cover most of the world by transmitting to the East as the Moon Rises, or to the West as the Moon sets – at least in theory… When the Moon is at the horizon there are usually obstructions at either end that will block or degrade the signals. As a result, the actual coverage area will be smaller than the illuminated portions of these maps suggests. See the next slides for my particular situation…
To all of you who don’t live on an island in the middle of the ocean, and are worried about trees on 23 cm… Take heart…
This is my view towards Europe (East). I usually wait until the Moon is above the top of that telephone pole, but lately I have been trying to work stations in Eastern Europe and my last contact was at an elevation of 1.6 degrees. The top of the Moon was just visible above the trees.
I’m in the Northern Hemisphere, so the Moon passes behind these trees as it rises to the South East. Fortunately, it’s usually above these trees by the time it gets here. I can still see my Moon echoes through all this foliage, but they are very weak…
This is my view to the South. Not good! But by the time the Moon gets here it is high in the sky and it has set in Europe anyway, so there are very few stations to work…
This is the view looking to the West. I’ve managed to work one station in Australia so far, but that may be because I’ve only ever seen one Western Pacific station on the HB9Q Logger when the Moon was in view for both locations. They are all probably looking the other direction towards Europe…
The bottom line is that I have managed to work 19 countries in a fairly short amount of time through all this foliage using a 3-meter dish and 600 Watts output. Every station I’ve worked so far has had a strong enough signal to see in my waterfall display, and I could often hear their JT65 tones.
