Moon Bounce or “Earth Moon Earth” (EME) is an amateur radio activity where people attempt to transmit a signal towards to the moon, and listen to the reflected signal. In some cases a separate transmitter is not needed, as an already powerful constant transmitter like the GRAVES radar in France can be used.
Over on his YouTube channel user cqpy2rn has uploaded a video showing his moon bounce reception of the GRAVES radar using an eleven element yagi antenna. He compares the reception with an RTL-SDR, FunCube PRO Plus and SDRplay. He writes:
+++ Nooelec model NESDR Smart (RTL-SDR) +++
GOODs: Price $20, frequency stability 0.5ppm tcxo, aluminum case, firm sma antenna connector, better dynamic range than regular-cheaper RTL dongles. Easy gain adjustment.
BADs: No pass filters, freq coverage from 24MHz to 1.7GHz, poor dynamic range (moderate de-sense with near strong signals)+++ FunCube PRO PLUS – FCDPP +++
GOODs: freq coverage from 150KHz to 2GHz, pass saw filters, frequency stable 0.5ppm tcxo, easy gain adjustment, acceptable dynamic range.
BADs: Plastic case, fragile sma connector, just 192KHz wide spectrum view, price $160.+++ SDRPlay +++
GOODs: Frequecy coverage from 10KHz to 2GHz, firm SMA connector, pass saw filters, up to 8MHz wide spectrum view, acceptable dynamic range.
BADs: Plastic case, legacy printer USB connector, frequency drift during warm up, difficult gain adjustmentCONCLUSION: In essence all these have the same “DNA”, they were made from digital TV tuner chips, comparisons produce very similar RX practical results, the RTL suffers due the lack of internal filtering which can be a little remediated adjusting the gain carefully through your SDR software or adding external filters. FCDPP and SDRPlay are vey similar, although the freq drift for SDRPlay is a bit annoying to me.
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