April Moonbounce

My Moonrise

This week I had several days of unobstructed ocean moonrises as the Moon peaked on its monthly northern declination track. Thanks to the recent topping of my next door neighbour's large Douglas Fir, and removal of low-hanging branches, I am now able to track moonrises a little further to the south than before and can add two more EME days that were previously blocked by the large tree. All operations are on 2m JT65B mode, using a 9el Yagi and 140W output.




When I started (April 1) conditions looked as if they should be good, with lunar perigee (Moon's closest approach), degradation (background skynoise) and declination all looking favorable, but I was in for a surprise.

The rising yellow plot indicates the Earth-Moon distance growing further apart (increasing path losses) while the red plot indicates fluctuation in daily skynoise (temperature) near the moon. The blue plot indicates declination track from north to south ... for me, the higher the better.

courtesy: http://www.mmmonvhf.de/eme.php

Listening on the first two days (April 1-2) produced a few weak signals from the larger stations only and nothing from the more common '4-Yagi' stations and, no QSO's ... something was amiss. I can only attribute this to some real-time solar flaring during this two-day period and the resultant short term geomagnetic agitation the flares produced ... but almost as if the 'switch' had been flipped, the third day proved to be much different.

On day three, five new 'initials' were worked including one new state (New York) and two new DXCC countries! Truly surprising was that two of the stations worked were using just two Yagis, with both stations answering one of my 'CQ's.

Good conditions continued for the next few days, bringing my initials count from #87 to # 95, with the following stations all going into the log, turning a disappointing start into one of the best lunar sessions I have encountered:

HA6NQ, LZ2FO (two 13 el Yagis), EB5EEO, K2ZJ (two 14 el Yagis), DK5YA, S52LM, F8DO, PA5Y, SV6KRW, UA3PTW, OK1UGA.

April's operation brought  my 2m DXCC count to 29 and states worked total to 27.

SV6KRW's 4 x 8el Array

EB5EEO's 4 x 32el Cross-polarized Array (16V / 16H)

DK5YA's 4 x 22 Cross-polarized Array (11V / 11H)

As mentioned in my last EME report, I keep wondering when I will run out of stations that are able to hear my small station, forcing me to build a bigger amplifier for a few more precious db, but with the ability to occasionally work some 2-Yagi stations, the list of potential targets has increased dramatically ... perhaps the large Fir tree was a bigger attenuator than I had thought.