Earth–Moon–Earth contact

Together with the Honfy József amateur radio club /HA1KHJ/ we decided to pay tribute to the scientific work of Zoltán Bay by repeating his famous Moon radar experiment. We also want an answer to the question: how far is Győr from the Moon? Before transmitting the university club's call sign, we need to know how reception stands — encouraging, but a few dB are still missing for reliable copy.

Who else could we have asked for advice but Zoltán Bay? We visited his memorial in Újpest and, laying our wreath, we seemed to hear his voice advising us to make up the missing decibels with new antennas.

Taking his advice, we experimented at length. The Moon rose and set, rose and set again — and then we finally received radio signals from the Moon. We had to be certain that the radio waves really reached our antennas reflected off the lunar surface.

The big day came and we made our first contacts with a British and a Russian radio amateur. We continue experimenting and fine-tuning our antennas so that, with more and more contacts, we can measure the distance of our university from the Moon.