Empirical Earth · Radio & Long-Distance Signals
Moonbounce (EME) — pinging the Moon and timing the echo
The claim
“The Moon is small and nearby; the '384,000 km' figure is just globe dogma.”
What is measured
Bounce a radio signal off the Moon and the echo returns in ~2.4–2.7 s, a light-speed round trip to a body ~384,000 km away.
What would show this is wrong
a Moon-bounce echo returning in much less than ~2.4–2.7 s.
Sources
- Earth–Moon–Earth (EME) communication. "Moonbounce" reflects radio off the Moon; the echo returns in ~2.4–2.7 s, placing the Moon ~384,000 km away at the speed of light. First achieved by the link
- Amateur Moon-bounce (EME) — bands, path loss, reflectivity. EME is worked on every amateur band from 50 MHz to 47 GHz (144 and 1296 MHz the most popular); the Moon reflects only about 6% of link
- EME equipment and the self-echo test. Stations use high-gain Yagi arrays (VHF/UHF) or parabolic dishes (microwave), a low-noise preamp at the feed and 100–1500 W; JT65 decodes ~28 dB below t link
- WSJT-X / JT65 — written by a Nobel physicist. The free WSJT-X suite, by Joseph H. Taylor Jr. (K1JT), 1993 Nobel laureate in Physics, generates and decodes the JT65/Q65 weak-signal modes that link
- First amateur EME contact, 1960. The Eimac Radio Club (W6HB, San Carlos, California) and the Rhododendron Swamp VHF Society (W1BU, Massachusetts) completed the first two-way amateur moonboun link
The full entry, with the working →