[NLRS] KP4 on 432 EME

[Ken Boston]

Hi All;

I had an opportunity to listen to, and try and work KP4AO on 432 from the big dish in P.R. over the weekend.  I was unable to try anything on Friday due to a little thing called work.  Because I have been selling off/ giving away some of my spare antennas, I did not have a long boom to try with, as my only 432 antenna is 12 ft up the mast on the roof, and I did not want to take that down just for this.  I did have an 8/8 element cushcraft satellite antenna, and bolted it to a temp mast bungee-corded to my deck.  After listening for about an hour, I heard nothing, and guessed that the circularly polarized antenna did not have the right 'sense'.  Gary, W9XT had just returned from the Madison ham fest, and brought over a linearly polarized 9 ele M2, with about a 4 ft boom.  We bolted to the small X-boom on my temp mast, and connected the cable.  We now could hear weak SSB, just at the noise floor, not good enough to work as you couldn't make out calls well enough. Gary left, and I did hear the KP4 guys shift to CW, and were a little more consistent, about 25-50 % copy in the noise.  I then made several calls, but no QSO.  They seemed to be working many EU stations, and few NA.

This was with my 500 Watt amp on 432, into an FT847, but not using my mast mounted preamp.

On Sunday, before they came up, I climbed on the roof, and dropped my masthead preamp off the short tower, and connected it right at the back of the M2 9 ele.  Now, when the window to the big dish opened, they were Q3-Q4 on SSB, and after about 1/2 hour they went to CW, and were an honest Q5 but S1 on the small yagi.  I called them for the entire time they were on CW, but had to hear them come back primarily to eastern EU stations. (for whom the moon was setting, so every SP, YO, YU, ect with 432 capabilities was in there) At about 3 PM they shifted to JT65B, and were solid.  Problem is, my JT65 transmit lash up is configured for my 144 TX, not the 432 station.  After sitting and seeing a solid trace on RX, (easy to plug in the RX to the laptop, more cables are needed for TX)  I tore into the wiring and switched over to TX into the FT847, after some debugging I was ready to TX, but managed only 3 TX sequences before they went QRT.

Net result; listening was successful, but no QSO.

I monitored the websdr site, which was streaming the audio, and a waterfall display from a 25 meter dish in Australia, which indicated many, many callers the entire time.  I also tuned briefly up to 432.090 and could easily HEAR the tones from HB9Q, who was on the air from Switzerland with a 'small' 15 meter dish.  This on a 4 ft antenna!!

I continue to make improvements on my 144 EME JT65 setup, this moonbounce is addicting!!  (I remember how hard it was to work guys years ago from my Madison WI location, on 144 via CW, using a pair of 4CX250R's and 4 x 13 ele KLM's)


BTW, 144 sprint was 41 QSOs, 22 grids.

Ken W9GA