Deep Space Exploration Society
Colorado — Radio Astronomy at the Speed of Light
Operational events, like field days, contests, EME, etc.
The 2025 Western Conference of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers was held on March 14th through the 16th. Bill Miller, DSES VP, attended and presented a talk on the DSES facilities and activities.
In his report, in addition to an overview of the conference, there are links to the presentation video recording and slides.
SARA Western Conference Report
The Deep Space Exploration Society participated in the 2024 ARRL EME contest using the K0PRT station operating on 23 cm (1296 MHz). This was the first major contest that was held at the new building, and it was a very successful operation with over 20 participants across the two weekends. Paul NO0T coordinated the activity with several out-of-town visitors in attendance.
The first weekend, October 19-20, was impacted by a severe storm that came through Haswell on Friday night and prevented operations for the first day. After the storm it was discovered that there was a failure in the dish movement mechanism. After climbing inside the pedestal, a broken chain was found on the azimuth drive. After two trips to the Eads NAPA auto parts store a replacement chain was put into operation. This allowed the station to participate in the contest on the second day.
The second weekend, November 16-17, had very good attendance with some local visitors, good food, and folks sleeping over in the new building. The heating, kitchen and restroom in the new building worked out great for those that attended. Thanks to Bill KC0FHN for insuring that the new building was operational. In addition to the operators on site, there was also a remote operation by Mark VK6PY. Mike K0FYR shot a great video covering the second weekend of the contest: ARRL EME 2024.
Alex K6VHF provided a detailed breakdown of the contacts made during the contest: Contest Results. Highlights include 163 contacts, of which 9 were CW, the rest were Q65 Digital. There were 31 countries worked, across 5 contents and 18 zones. This included an amazing contact with Martin PJ4MM in Bonaire who was running 10 watts into a 63-element antenna. We were the first US station to work him. See the photo below that shows an in-person exchange of QSL cards at Alex’s house.
Over 50% of the contacts were to Europe. With a score of 1,536,800 points, we likely finished in the top 5 worldwide. If we had been able to operate on the first night in October, we would have done even better!
Equipment used include the DSES 60-foot dish, Icom 705 and “Dianne” – a 1296 MHz transverter with 300 watts of power. Various software programs include WSJT-X, Win4Icom, N1MM+, Splashtop (for remote access) and the DSES custom built antenna tracking software.
Thanks to everyone who participated and cleaned up after the event.
Bill Miller, DSES VP, has written a great report on the DSES Open House that was held on October 5, 2024. It was a very successful event with over 100 attendees enjoying the new building and other activities.
Click here for the report: 2024 Open House.
There is also a video provided by Mike K0FYR: 2024 Open House
The first DSES SSTV EME Party was held on Saturday September 28, 2024. Successful image transmissions were made to several EME stations in Europe and the United States. See the report including screen shots of received images.
The activity was conducted from the new DSES operations building at our Haswell Colorado site. Here is what the Dish operations console looked like during the event:
NRAO’s Ham Radio-Related Online Courses are Open for Enrollment.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)Funded by a grant from ARDC, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has developed two no-cost, self-paced online courses on the SuperKnova platform that introduce amateur radio-related fundamental concepts. These courses were created in an effort to not only get learners licensed, but to also grow the amateur radio community, contributing to the hobby’s longevity.
If you’re interested in becoming a ham, if you’re already a ham and need a refresher, or if you’re simply interested in the fundamentals of the electromagnetic spectrum as it applies to your career, check out the below links to enroll in one of these courses:
Technician Amateur Radio License and EMS Course https://superknova.org/technician-course/
General Amateur Radio License and EMS Course https://superknova.org/general-course/
You can also learn more by checking out their recent press release: https://public.nrao.edu/news/unlock-the-secrets-of-the-invisible-radio-universe-with-superknova/
The Deep Space Exploration Society (DSES), a 501 C(3) non-profit (K0PRT) is working to save a 30-foot EME dish which was built and used by Bruce K0YW who passed away last year. The 30-foot Kennedy EME dish is located in a remote area of SW Colorado near Ignacio and is scheduled to be torn down for metal scrap this July so that the property can be sold by Bruce’s XYL.
DSES is trying to raise donations to help pay for a crane and then transport the antenna 330 miles to their location near Haswell Colorado in SE Colorado and reinstall the dish. All donations received will help fund this dish removal, which includes crane rental, transportation, lodging and any associated cost in the reassembly process and re-mounting this dish back on the 25-foot tower secured to a large concrete foundation at the DSES Plishner Site in Southeast Colorado.
No amount is too small and DSES really appreciates your support. The plan is to rebuild and reinstall the dish late this year or early in 2025.
Bill WT0DX represented DSES at three recent ham radio events: The CSVHF Conference, the Rocky Mountain Division Convention and the Denver Radio Club Hamfest. In each case, a posterboard display was set up, site videos were displayed, and club brochures were handed out. The upcoming Open House was also promoted.
The annual CSVHF conference was held July 27-30 in Little Rock, AR. There were about 150 participants. The posterboard display was set up in the main meeting room and the Friday night swap room. In addition to talking about the club, several folks said they were interested in attending the Open House.
The Rocky Mountain Division Convention was held August 11-13 in Albuquerque, NM. They provided a free table for clubs in the swap meet area. There were about 400 attendees, and many interesting conversations. Unfortunately, many of the folks thought that the DSES site was too far away for an Open House visit.
Bill also had an opportunity to discuss DSES with David Minster NA2AA the CEO of ARRL. He was unaware of the club but found it very interesting.
The Denver Radio Club Hamfest was held on Sunday August 27th at the Adams County Fairgrounds. This is a well-attended hamfest and we had many good conversations about the club, with quite a bit of interest in the Open House. Also, Paul NO0T managed to secure a great donation to the club of several HF Yagi antennas.
Photos courtesy of Glenn Davis. Text by Bill Miller.
On Friday afternoon October 14, 2022, we prepared the 60-foot dish antenna for the weekend’s Moonbounce communications operations in the ARRL EME contest.
Glen Davis updated the tracking software, checked the callibration of the mount and helped as ground crew and photographer. Meanwhile Ray Uberecken and Bill Miller climbed the scaffold and changed the feed from the 437 Mhz antenna to the 1296Mhz antenna. They also installed Ray’s 180 watt amplifier at the antenna feed point and checked the system reception from Ray’s Calhan residence beacon.
Deep Space Exploration Society will support the Japanese OMOTENASHI Cube Sat Moon lander, by attempting to receive and record its UHF downlink signals enroute to the Moon and after landing. OMOTENASHI is a project created by the Japanese space agency JAXA Amateur Radio Club, and is one of ten Cube Sat satellites on the NASA Artemis 1 lunar mission.
Several hours after Artemis 1 boosts from an Earth parking orbit to a transfer orbit to the Moon, OMOTENASHI should deploy. After 6 days the OMOTENASHI will separate into an orbiter and lander, and the lander will make a hard landing on the Moon. The lander is designed to survive and then transmit signals.
OMOTENASHI & EQUULEUS: the tiny spacecraft onboard the world’s most powerful rocket – Cosmos
OMOTENASHI (in Japanese): mission movie
Post by Gary Agranat, with Ray Uberecken and Floyd Glick.
Photos by Glenn Davis, Marc Stover, Bill Miller, Floyd Glick, and Gary Agranat.
Last December DSES successfully completed operating Moon bounce communications for a second year, for the annual ARRL EME (Earth-Moon-Earth communications) Contest EME Contest (arrl.org). The contest had two rounds last autumn. We reported earlier on operating for the first round on the weekend of November 20 & 21, 2021. This article is about successful completion of the second round, on the weekend of December 19 & 20, 2021.
This was our most successful EME season to date, not just in the number of contacts we made, but in the participation of our members, in successfully using a digital mode for many contacts for the first time, and with our equipment working well with no trouble. And we are learning from our experiences.
For our December weekend we had Gary Agranat WA2JQZ and Ray Uberecken AA0L operate through the whole weekend. We also had Jim Burnett WB0GMR, Flyod Glick WD0CUJ, Bill Miller KC0FHN, Glenn Davis, and Marc Stover. Jim got his first experience operating EME, making some of the digital Q65 contacts Friday night. Floyd, Bill, and Glenn stayed Friday night. Marc was there both nights to make time lapse movies of the antenna tracking the Moon. Glenn ensured our tracking system was working well. Everyone had a chance to call CQ on SSB and to hear their voices reflect back from the Moon 2 seconds later.
Moon bounce is communicating by sending signals to the Moon, and reflecting those signals back to Earth to anyone else who has visibility of the Moon and the necessary equipment. With the Moon’s distance a quarter of a million miles away, traveling at the speed of light, the signals take about 2 seconds to make the round trip journey. And the signals are significantly weakened by traveling that long a distance. With the Moon traveling at a different velocity from one’s location on the surface of the Earth, there also is a Doppler shift to compensate for. Moon bounce communications therefore can be quite a technical challenge. Reliably copying the weak signals can also be a challenge. With our large 60-foot dish antenna, our group is fortunate to have an excellent capability to meet all these challenges.
Because Moonrise was at about the time of sunset (as it was on the November weekend), our EME operation was essentially all over night, with a short period available also after sunrise.
We operated on the 23 cm band (1296 Mhz). We operated Morse Code CW, SSB voice, and Q65 digital mode. More about our technical setup later.
On our December weekend we made 47 EME contacts. Added to our November weekend operation, that brought the total number of contacts to 92. This compares with the 50 contacts we made for the contest last year.
Of the 92 contacts, 54 were CW (Morse Code), 2 were SSB phone, and 36 were in the new Q65 digital mode. 53 contacts were to Europe, 33 to North America, 3 to South America, 1 to Australia, 1 to the Philippines, and 1 to Asia (Japan). We contacted 22 unique DXCC entities, 16 states, and 3 Canadian provinces.
For the November weekend, Dan Layne AD0CY got our Q65 digital mode working and made 2 contacts then. On the December weekend, Jim WB0GMR operated Friday night and made 8 Q65 contacts. Gary WA2JQZ stayed for the operations on both weekends and made the other contacts (CW, SSB, and Q65) with the help of Ray AA0L.
For this year’s contest we experienced no significant technical problems. That enabled us to start operating as soon as the contest time started and as soon as we had a signal path to the Moon. The operations for both weekends went smoothly and with a relaxed tone.
Ray AA0L contributed this technical description: The moonbounce equipment this year consists of an ICOM IC-1271A with a built-in low noise preamp (about 1 dB), a VHF Design 150 Watt amplifier at the feed, a Tokyo High Power intermediate power amp with built in Gasfet preamp, VHF Design .3 dB nf, 30 dB gain preamp at the feed and a KL6M feed with a choke. All this provides a noise figure of 0.4 dB with an overall gain at the feed of >40 dB. We have more than sufficient gain in both directions to overcome the 200 or so feet of feedline from the trailer to the dish feed.
On Friday night we tried to get in as much Morse Code CW contacts as we could. We switched to digital Q65 when we had contacted most of the CW contacts we could hear at a given time. Through the night we alternated back and forth. We also occasionally attempted SSB voice.
On Saturday morning we determined when the Moon would rise in Japan and in Australia. We stayed awake for that, and when those times came, we searched for those stations. That’s how we immediately found our Japan and Australian contacts, as soon as they had a signal path. We got them in time before the pileups that followed. When we couldn’t hear any additional stations, we went to sleep.
We had an unexpected power failure late Saturday morning, after the Moon had set and we were taking a break. The cause was eventually traced to a pigeon that had short circuited the transformer where the electric power comes into the site. We called the local utility, and after a couple of hours they reset the circuit breaker on the main county road. This was unfortunate for the pigeon. But fortunately for us this didn’t happen during our EME operation, and didn’t disrupt us.
As we anticipated, most of the stations we heard on CW on Sunday night were ones we had already worked. Therefore on Sunday night we concentrated most of our efforts on digital Q65. We made most of our digital contacts then.
On Sunday morning after the Moon had set, as we woke up and wound down and had coffee, Gary made some HF FT-8 digital contacts on the 15 and 20 meter bands. A portable multi-band end fed antenna was extended from the trailer to the service tower. And the contacts were made on a Yaesu FT-950. The bands were open to as far as Europe and Japan. This gave us a chance to get on the air on the more traditional ham bands, and to be part of the rest of the ham radio community. Over 50 FT-8 contacts were made.
The Yaesu FT-950 operating HF FT-8 and the End fed antenna extended to the service tower. (Photos by Gary Agranat)
This was our most successful EME operation to date. We made more contacts, our equipment worked well as expected, we had increased participation, we developed our experience further, and we all enjoyed the experience. Certainly hearing one’s voice or signal come back from the Moon 2 seconds later is an experience one doesn’t forget. This should give us a basis for doing more EME operations, better, and more times than just for the contest.
This year several members also devoted their efforts to photographing. Marc Stover’s time lapse movie work and Floyd Glick’s lunar photography follow.
Mark Stover devoted all of Friday and Saturday nights to record time lapse movies of our dish antenna tracking the Moon, from Moonrise to Moonset. He used several cameras, capturing several perspectives, and several aspects of the antenna’s and sky’s motions. These are still images from photographing. These are followed by a one-minute movie he edited together. The temperature both nights dropped to the teens F. Marc wore an exposure suit to keep warm.
Floyd Glick (WD0CUJ) took these astronomical color images of the Moon on Friday night. He took these unfiltered images through his 5 inch Maksutov telescope (unguided). Floyd wrote: “The Moon actually has color, but because it is so bright our eyes perceive it as black and white. I have enhanced the colors (solar temperature = 5900K) in the last picture to illustrate them better.”
QSL confirmation cards we received for our EME contacts, by eQSL and post office mail. Countries represented are Argentina, Chile, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United States:
Some of the variety of QSL cards we received for our high frequency (HF) FT-8 digital contacts from Sunday morning, on the 15 and 20 meter bands. We reached North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa:
