Dwingeloo Telescope active again this year with the Jamboree On The Air

Friday, October 14, 2022 and Saturday, October 15, 2022, the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope will function again as an online ‘Earth Moon Earth’ (EME) relay station. Scouting groups will send signals to the moon with their self-built antennas during the international ‘Jamboree On The Air’ (JOTA). Due to its enormous sensitivity, the Dwingeloo telescope is very suitable for receiving the extremely weak EME signals. These signals are being streamed over the internet by means of the CAMRAS webSDR. You can watch it via this link: 70 cm EME, provided you have installed the special decoder software WSJT-X. Via a virtual cable, the signal from the webSDR comes into the aforementioned software. You should set the audio level to approximately “30dB” (“green”). The scouts use the “JT65” and “sub B” mode in WSJT-X and at the same time the option “EME delay” must be enabled so that the necessary 2.5 seconds delay is used. This delay is necessary to account for the duration of the moon echoes.

On Friday evening, October 14, 2022, the radiotelescope will be online between 10 PM and midnight. Saturday October 15, 2022 we will be online between 9.00 AM and 1 PM and if there are enough participants, also Saturday evening from 10 PM to midnight. This year’s CAMRAS crew consists of: Michel Arts, Piet Pont, Roel Ovinge and Simon Bijlsma.

Fourteen years ago, this JOTA-EME project was initiated by Frans de Jong, who wrote a construction description in Dutch for the required ’23 elements Long Yagi voor de 70cm band’. See also the page JOTA-JOTI and the blog post about it from 2008 (also both in Dutch).