A huge tracking dish is to become available for amateur radio EME operation on 432 MHz

The InfoAge Science History Museum in Wall Township, New Jersey, plans to make a 60 foot tracking dish antenna available to hams for moonbounce, secondary to its function as a radiotelescope.

It was on the InfoAge site, then part of Fort Monmouth, that the US Army’s “Project Diana” team in 1946 first received radio signals bounced from the moon.

According to InfoAge’s Martin Flynn, W2RWJ, Daniel Marlow, K2QM, an InfoAge board member who teaches physics at Princeton, wants to use the dish, currently under rehabilitation after being dormant since the 1970s, to pursue radio astronomy for instructional purposes.

Marlow’s primary goal is to restore the TLM-18 dish antenna to working order and use it to see the 21 centimeter radiation from the Milky Way. But he also wants to observe radio pulsars, and since that activity can be performed at 70 centimeters, the TLM-18 will be made available to the Amateur Radio community for EME at 432 MHz on a secondary basis.

ARRL story - http://www.arrl.org/news/huge-tracking-dish-to-become-available-for-eme

Vintage Newsreel of Project Diana Earth-Moon-Earth - http://www.southgatearc.org/news/march2013/vintage_newsreel_of_project_diana_earth_moon_earth.htm