Decoding a EME station
Linrad
Linrad from Leif SM5BMZ has a couple of things that make it extremely useful for week signal work like EME. 1) The Smart noise blanker in Linrad is not destructive like a normal noise blanker that just blanks out the noise. While that works for voice it is not very useful for data. The Smart noise blanker separates the large and week signals, does its thing and then recombines them. The week signals are not 'blanked' in this process. Bloody useful in noisey environments. 2) Linrad can be configured to run 4 slave Linrad instances that can be configured for 0, 45, 90 & 135 degrees - what gets called Adaptive Polarisation. These 4 instances feed 4 WSJT-X instances
MAP65
MAP65 provides a band scope that covers 96Khz. Its fed from Linrad and has the V and H amplitude as well as phase information for the 96Khz. MAP65 has Q65 and JT65 decoders as well however I find WSJT-x more sensitive. What I use it for most is to find a quite part of the band to operate in. I also is connect it to LiveCQ and any decoded CQ's get spotted on www.liveCQ.eu.
WSJT-X - Adaptive Polarisation
For Adaptive Polarisation 4 separate instances of WSJT-X are connected to 4 slave instances of Linrad using 4 virtual audio cables. These correspond to 0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees polarisation of the received signals. It's as simple as picking the WSJT-X best decoder for the signal that you are chasing. Sometimes only one WSJT-X will decode the DX station and ifs its a big gun all 4 will decode the DX station. Alex from LinkRF kindly dialled into my PC and loaded the Linrad master and slave instances for this setup.
WSJT-X H & V transverters
With the K4D having two very good receivers I purchased a 2nd transverter from Kuhne. This was a small MKU 432 G2 that sits inside the the instrument case on the top left of this picture. This allows the main
TR 432H transverter to drive the A receiver for H -pol RX and the new MKU 432 to drive the B receiver for V-pol RX in the K4D. I find the combination of the Kuhne transverters and K4D receivers to offer excellent performance. Also in the instrument case are some W6PQL FET switches used with the TR434H sequencer along with the all the miscellaneous stuff like H/V TX relay switching and even the relay on my 40m loop that make it work on 80m.
Morse Code - the ultimate contact off the moon
CW is has a strong following among moon bouncers. I have only had one successful EME CW QSO and that was with Jan DL9K9. I have partially decoded four more stations but never good enough for a two way contact. With the 2.5 second propagation delay due and doppler CW is not as straight forward as HF. Generally each operator will transmit for 1 minute and listen for 1 minute (odd and even minutes). Sometimes 2.5 minute intervals are used instead.