VK3NX

Ever since I attained my Amateur Radio Licence in 1986 I was fascinated with working "weak signals". In my earlier years I became very interested in building antennas and transverters for use on VHF and UHF and chasing "weak signals" of the terrestrial kind. In March of 2002 I worked the BIG GUN station of W5UN on 2m with my homebrew single 14 element DL6WU design Yagi. Hearing a CW signal off the moon for the first time was a "thrill" I have never forgotten. Soon afterwards in April 2002 I worked KB8RQ on 2m CW .

My first 432MHz QSO was in CW with DL9KR in May 2002 using my homebrew 2@ 27 Element DL6WU designed array. Several other BIG GUN QSO's followed from my QTH in the noisy suburbs of Melbourne and by the end of 2002 I was HOOKED!

In 2006, a family move from suburban Melbourne to the then rural setting of LARA gave me the opportunity to finally chase my radio dream of being able to one day hear my own echoes off the moon.

With no VK activity on 5.7GHz EME at that time I set out to build an EME station for this band on which I finally heard my own CW signal reflects off the moon. As it turned out I was a few weeks late to achieve the first 5.7GHz EME QSO from VK but the installation opened the door for me to persue EME activities on other microwave bands.

At my present QTH in QF21CT I have my 3.7m Joysat dish installed allowing me to be QRV from 1296MHz - 10 GHz for EME.

In the earlier days at this QTH the dish had an almost 0 degree moonset horizon but this is gradually increasing as my neighbour's trees are growing.

The 3.7m dish has a mesh covering of 4mm "gaps"and performs very well to 5.7GHz. It is useable at 10 GHz but the gain is more like a 3.0m dish.

Total weight of the dish and the hub is only 37 Kg and is quite manageable for the heavy duty actuators to provide the steering.

A larger dish and new setup is planned for the future

A Second dish provides operation on 24 GHz. This is a solid 2.4m ANDREWS dish. The heavy reinforcing has proved to be very accurate on 24GHz.