Working Japan on any band from Ireland is pretty good but what about doing it on 432 MHz? That's exactly what Tony EI8JK did on Monday the 10th of September 2018 when he worked Toshia JA6AHB by bouncing 70 cms signals off the moon!
The pair have been trying to make the contact for several weeks with Tony making small incremental improvements to his system to squeeze out every fraction of a dB. In the end, they managed to complete the contact using the JT65 mode on Monday morning during a 2-hour window to make it an EI-JA first on the UHF band.
In terms of equipment, JA6AHB was using 500 watts into a 7 metre dish while Tony was using 4 x 21 element yagis with a medium powered amplifier. His antenna system is shown below.
Tony lives on the scenic Sheeps Head peninsula in West Cork and no doubt the remote location with low noise background really helps on the VHF and UHF bands. With his current set-up and more improvements on the way, he hopes to work many more stations off the moon on 432 MHz.
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