..shack of K5SO in its evolution. The 23-cm EME equipment configuration presently consists of an IC-7800 transceiver at 28 MHz to receive (via the normal HF receiver input connector) the IF output from a DEMI 1296/28 MHz transverter. On transmit, the XVTR -3dBm output of the IC-7800 is used to drive the DEMI transverter. Using the normal HF input for receive and XVTR output for transmit separates Rx and Tx lines completely. The DEMI transverter delivers 25 watts to drive a TH-328 cavity amplifier to 450 watts output at 1296 MHz. EME equipment shown in the shorter rack (bottom up) is the 2KV DC HV power supply for the TH-328 amplifier, 12 VDC power supply (for the transverter, T/R sequencer, fan cooling for the input section of the TH-328 amp, and preamplifier at the dish), filament and bias supply for the TH-328 amplifier, 28 VDC power supply (on top of rack) for the T/R relay (at the dish), DEMI transverters (only one used at a time), DEMI T/R sequencer, TH-328 cavity amplifier, and dish manual-steering panel (tracking is automated). Cavity output power is measured using an HP-432A power meter (top right, on top of rack) with a -50 dB directional coupler on the output of the cavity. The original local oscillator in the transverter used is disabled. The local oscillator signal is provided externally instead by an HP 8642B synthesized signal generator (left, on top of rack) which is slaved to the 5 MHz output of a rubium frequency standard to achieve high frequency stability. Also shown in the photo on top of the IC-7800 transceiver are a microwave frequency counter, GR-1236 IF amp/meter for sun noise measurements, transceiver speaker, an audio amplifier, W2DRZ dish control/position encoder readout interface, and a GPS-25 receiver (top). Tracking software is the F1EHN EME System v.6 (freeware). The leftmost equipment rack contains a 1.5 KW transmiter power amplifier and power supplies for 70-cm EME operation.

Left of the IC-7800 transceiver, and unrelated to EME operation, is an HF power amplifier, antenna tuner, and antenna controller. Left of the upper-level computer display is a high-frequency spectrum analyzer, low-frequency pulse synthesizer, precision frequency counter, rubidium vapor frequency standard, a 16-bit divider, and an SDR-14 software defined receiver for amateur radio astronomy work. The leftmost lower-level PC computer and display are used to run the F1EHN dish tracking software and TEMPO-derived pulsar sync freq calculator programs. The rightmost lower-level PC is used to run Spectran during EME operations and CPU-intensive SpectraVue/SDR-14 programs during pulsar radio astronomy observations.

TH-328 cavity amplifier showing the directional coupler (blue) for output power monitoring, power-meter thermistor mount (gray w/red cable), input isolator (gray, round), water-cooling jacket on the TH-328 anode, water (anode) and air (input) cooling hoses, and high-voltage plate resistors (March 21, 2007).