Thursday, April 02, 2009

Amateur Radio Ops Bounce Signals Off Venus

Yep, they did!

Turns out this is just part of the run-up for AMSAT's mission to Mars.

Mission to Mars. Amateur-style. Yeah.

7 comments:

Turk Turon said...

They have achieved EVE (Earth-Venus-Earth).

Five minutes, round-trip. Wow!

wv: dragg

Turk Turon said...

P.S. Even cooler! The returning signals were so weak that they had to use statistical methods to detect them. Used to be, all you needed was a diode. Now, you gotta use FFT (Fast Fourier Transform). Out of my ken.

Anonymous said...

Plus la change. The proceedings of the Interplanetary Society are in German. Again.

It's like going to Galt's Gulch with Wernher von Braun.

rickn8or said...

How long before they're blamed for causing Glow-ball Worming on Venus?

mts1 said...

It warms my heart that there are still hammers out there with the antenna truss next to the house (I'll drive down the road and occasionally say "a Ham once lived there," passengers in total oblivion as to what I'm referring), sitting in the radio shack, exchanging qsl cards, keying out a message, working the gray line during twilight ...

homebru said...

Best DX ever.

At least until a little guy from Alpha Centauri shows up with a handful of QSL cards and demands "Take me to your bureau".

Anonymous said...

The best I ever did was moon-bounce to a guy in Macedonia on 20 meter when I was in high school :| In any event I'm impressed.

Jim