[Moon-net] Ten years ago...food for thoughts..

[Bodo Heyl]

Just by chance I went through some old QST, the official journal of ARRL,
and found in QST /January 1998 the following article:

A conversation with Mike Cook, AF9Y
The first in an occasional series of interviews with hams
who are making important contributions to our hobby.

quote
Q: Will DSP ever make it possible for hams with small stations
to work moonbounce?
A: What constitutes a small station for moonbounce?
I believe we should be working toward an approach that allows
a two-way exchange of calls during a 30 minute period with the following
minimum system at both ends of the link:

* 200W transmitter output
* A pair of 10-foot antennas, or one 20-foot antenna
* 0,5dB NF receive system

It appears that 432MHz offers the greatest opportunity to meet
this objective with current technology. Still a processing gain of
approx. 15dB over the typical CW waveform would be required for
a better than 50% chance of completion.
Polarity rotation has a major impact on moonbounce operation. Signals
are very likely to arrive at angels other than the receive antenna polarity.
Leif Asbrink, SM5BSZ, has spearheaded a small revolution in this area
by developing practical polarity controlled antenna/receiving systems.

We need a similar breaktrough in the waveform area.
Phil Karn, KA9Q, and Tom Clark, W3IWI, have studied and
proposed several good ideas, but nothing has yet been demonstrated.

...........

Q: How do you feel about the future of Amateur Radio?
Where we are heading?
A: I'm a little worried that Amateur Radio is not attracting the
creative talent it did years ago.
Instead of blaming Internet and computers for our decline, we should
be embracing them as tools to attract and inspire the next generation.
The lines that used to separate computer hobbyists and hams are
dissolving; the hobbies are beginning to merge.
Huge numbers of hams have now e-mail addresses and surf the web
regularly (or have Web sites of their own).
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We need to reduce
the in-fighting on issues like spread spectrum, CW and so on.
We should set our differences aside and combine forces to fight
the real enemy, which is continued government sell-off of the
RF spectrum.
unquote

So AF9Y in 1998....

73s de Bodo/DL2FCN