Shooting the Super Moon - EME for beginers

This evening as I drove in to work, for a night shift, while the talking on ham radio with my pal Graham GW0HUS I noticed the so called Super Moon. Between 18:00 and 19:30 the moon was sitting in a clear cloudless sky and looked so close you could touch it. Apparently it is 18 years since the moon has been so close and as last night was a full moon it looked particularly impressive. I am keeping my fingers crossed that Charlie G0PZO has been out with his telescope and camera and will post some more of his amazing moonscapes on the net.

The sight got me to thinking about Moon Bounce or Earth-Moon-Earth communications and I realised I did not really know too much about what is involved. So the Internet being my lobster oyster so to speak I started to do some research and found this PDF by Bob Kocisko, K6PF about getting started on EME.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/507217/K6PF/k6pf.pdf

I was a little put off by this line, that refers to an advanced station "Minimum power should be in the 800 to 1000 watt range" (no good, only allowed 400w in the UK) and because I don't do CW but it is all fascinating reading. The article is a few years old and I wonder if some of the newer low power digital modes such a WSPR and JT65 could be successfully used with a much more modest station than would be required for CW or SSB contact?

The moon in the composite image above was taken using my Canon D-400 using only a 300mm lens. The stars were added later, but the UFO is obviously real. Just call me Spooky Mulder.