Amateur Radio at the Deep Space Exploration Society

 

 

Amateur Radio Announcement Board

 

The Deep Space Exploration Society (DSES) will be participating in the European Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) Contest at the Paul Plishner Radio Astronomy and Space Science Center, located in Haswell, CO. The European EME Contest will start at 0:00 UTC April 22 and end at 2400 UTC on April 23rd. Our 18-meter dish will be utilizing the 1.2GHz (23cm) amateur radio band for this contest. We will have operators on site starting late Friday afternoon April 21 when the contest starts at 6 PM MDST operating until the moon sets at 9:39 PM MDST. We will continue operations at Moon rise on Saturday, April 22 at 7:35 AM and continue until the moon sets at 10:46 PM. Sunday’s schedule April 23rd will start at 8:10 AM and continue until 6 PM or when the contacts stop. Variations to this schedule are subject to availability of personnel and weather conditions. Please bring water and food for personal consumption as we have limited resources on site. Please feel free to contact any of the Board of Directors or us at information(at)dses.science for any additional information concerning DSES. Information on past EME events may be found at http://dses.science/category/ham-radio/eme-moon-bounce

Regards.

Myron Babcock
President/Treasurer
Deep Space Exploration Society

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We sometimes operate on amateur radio casually, especially on some weekends. Also, some members like to participate in nets on 80 and 160 meters.  If we operate digitally for a while, we may spot ourselves on the DX cluster.

At this time we are developing a capability for members to operate K0PRT remotely. 

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Amateur Radio at the Deep Space Exploration Society

The DSES amateur radio club call sign is K0PRT (PRT for Plishner Radio Telescope).  In addition to our radio astronomy work, we have begun to use our 60 foot radio dish for ham radio EME moon bounce and tropospheric scatter. We operate on the amateur high frequency (HF) bands as well. And we have a 2 meter-band VHF call-in system to talk locally.

For antennas, we have on the Haswell site a 3-element tri-band (10, 15, & 20 meters) Yagi antenna on a 50-foot tower, a 5-band trap vertical antenna, and dipoles for the 80 and 160 meter bands. For the 6 meter band we have a 3-element Yagi and a wire delta loop.  

We operate for specific projects, as well as casually for fun.  We do special events.  And sometimes we participate in contests too.

We periodically upload our logs to ARRL Logbook of the World and eQSL.  We also respond to traditional QSL cards by mail.

If you contact us on the air and would like to receive a QSL card, please send a Stamped Self-Addressed (SASE) envelope, one that can hold a 4 inch x 6 inch card, to our new address below.  Please include your QSL card if you have one, or the QSO information for verifying the contact.

Deep Space Exploration Society
4164 Austin Bluffs Parkway #562
Colorado Springs, CO 80918

K0PRT has a page on QRZ.com: https://qrz.com/db/k0prt.

Our vertical 5-band antenna with radials, for the bunker ham radio station.

 

The operating table at our ham radio station.  We can operate two stations at the same time.
Several items of our ham equipment, including the Bandit amplifier, MFJ manual antenna tuner, and the IC-735 transceiver, were kindly donated to us by the family of WoFPG after he passed away. Several of our members supported us in obtaining our other equipment.

Our 50-foot tower.

The tower raised up.
K0PRT Tower components
The tower supports these ham radio antennas.

73, Gary WA2JQZ