LunART (Moon)

  • I was recently thinking about the Lunart project and using it in practice.


    And, I was thinking how on QO-100 I manually adjust my portable dish to use this satellite. I have my dish on a nice heavy-duty tripod and with general knowledge of the correct direction, I can pinpoint the satellite satellite in about 30 seconds give or take with my laptop/sdr handy - quite easy to do.


    This all works fine for QO-100 which is stationary.


    However, as I think about the moon continually moving, it becomes very obvious that on the proposed 10G downlink, we will all need a pretty stable and accurate tracking system to use the 10G downlink - I suspect this is going to very difficult to be accurately accomplished by most amateurs - what do you think ?


    At least with 2.4GHz uplink on QO-100, you can still be off a bit and have a good uplink signal.


    Will it be more practical to use a 2m or 70cm downlink ? Though these are the secondary possible signal links.


    Any thoughts folks ?


    Br, Joseph, OG7D.

  • Hi Joseph.


    Tracking the moon should not be too problematic. It moves very slowly and there are many EME tracking programs that will do this automatically.
    Even with manual controls it should be possible to gently, nudge the rotators and watch the signal levels.

    Not so different from the old Oscar 40 with the 2.4GHz downlink where you needed to make very small adjustments every 10 minutes or so. - Will be good if it happens and much easier than 10GHz from LEO.


    73


    David

  • Thanks for the reply - I did not use AO-40 even once, unfortunately, due to being too busy, but I did use AO-13 / AO-10.


    OK, that isn't too bad if 10 minute adjustments will be required.


    For me, I suppose the biggest problem will be all the trees I have around the yard blocking lower horizon viewing. I have my QO-100 dish carefully aligned between a few.


    Br, Joe.

  • DB2OS

    Changed the title of the thread from “ESA Lunar Lander” to “LunART (Moon)”.
  • Hi,


    from a veteran EME guy I heard that he was using a video camera fixed to his antenna to adjust his setup to the moon. He wrote that his wife operated the antenna joystick, targeting the moon on a TV screen while he made the QSOs. Of course, that was way before those programs that control the antenna position permanently.



    Vy 73


    Holger ‚Geri‘, DK8KW