Interplanetary qso

Started by underhill, April 04, 2014, 03:56:27 PM

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underhill

So Morse code has gone interplanetary, longest 'qso' is earth to mars on 10 meters ;).

I just received the latest NAQCC (april 2014) newsletter, and apparently Morse Code qso has gone interplanetary, with the Curiosity Mars Rover on Mars.

front page of the newsletter, third article, at the bottom of the page:
http://naqcc.info/newsletter_current.pdf

well, an automated qso, lol.

Allan

cockpitbob

#1
Sounds almost too good to be true.  I would love to know what antenna he was using.  The moon is a 3 second round trip and Mars is 11 minutes.  Mars is so far away that I can't believe there would be enough signal left to receive unless your antenna had a pencil think beam angle.  That would be a really big antenna for the 10M band.

One of the main reasons I learned Morse code is that doing EME is on my bucket list.  But, texting off the moon with a digital mode doesn't interest me.  I need the personal involvement of hearing my own CQ 3 seconds after I send it.


*** Wait a minute ***
There is no KA4FUN in the QRZ.com data base.  Also, the guy's last name, Piltdown, makes it sould like a hoax, as in the 1912 Piltdown Man paleoanthropological hoax.

OK, I just dug a litte deeper and clicked on the news letter's link to the previous appearance of Tom Piltdown, and then clicked on the "For more info on Tom and Paul's unusual situation" link.  Very nicely done.

underhill

April newsletter.   Ahh it got me

Allan

cockpitbob

#3
Quote from: underhill on April 04, 2014, 05:43:11 PM
April newsletter.   Ahh it got me

Allan
Fun.  I love those that are written so well that I take the bait even though I'm skepticle. :)   

This mont's ARRL magazine had one about a shortened end-fed antenna with a piezo at one end.  The premise was that dopler from the vibrations would shift it to a longer wavelength.  Even though I was saying WTF all the way through, I wasn't sure he was kidding until I saw HIHI in the credits at the end.  Last year's wasn't so clever.  In it a guy wanted a small multi-band antenna for mobile HF.  In the end he settled on a dummy load on a 2' mast.  It gave flat SWR from 160M to 6M and really low Rx noise.  He hadn't made any QSOs with it at the time of writing, but figured that was just poor band conditions.