Signals From the Moon

I'm sitting here listening to signals from the Moon!

No, I haven't lost my marbles. There is an experiment underway by the "HF Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)" and the "Long Wavelength Array (LWA)" in New Mexico on 6.7925 MHz. They requested that amateurs monitor the test, so I tuned in, and sure enough, there are the signals. They're sending 2 second unmodulated CW transmissions (sort of like a long Morse Code key press), followed by a 3 second wait.

I'm copying the transmissions at S9+20, and the echos are coming in at S1-S2.

Who knows why they are doing this, it's a military thing so maybe there is some secret purpose. I think we have already pretty well established the distance to the moon, but you can do a quick calculation to see why they are using the 2-second transmissions - the return signal follows them quite nicely.

Amateurs have been doing "Moon Bounce" for many years, but not on 40 meters! There has to be some serious power going into this test.

The picture above was taken in my backyard last year using a CCD camera on a 4" refractor.