PA7MDJ Amateur Radio Blog: EME Conference 2018

August 16, 2018

EME Conference 2018

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www.eme2018.nl

The 18th edition of the International EME Conference will be hosted by the Netherlands. It will take place on August 15-19 in Egmond aan Zee. Every two years the International EME Conference is the place to be to meet fellow "moonbounce" enthusiasts from all over the world.

It has always been my dream to one day make an EME contact, and a couple of years back my dream came true; with a low-budget moonbounce set-up (a single 10 el. yagi and 100 Watts) from my small backyard I managed to make two 2m EME contacts, one with I2FAK and one with KB8RQ. To me, EME is the ultimate DX, the ultimate in a ham's carreer.

So, I believe I'm entitled to say that I belong to the EME "incrowd". I will be attending the EME Conference on Saturday. I'm looking forward to meeting some of the EME experts and to learning more and being inspired during the various and numerous lectures.

The first International EME conference was held in New York City in 1966. Below a history of past editions in chronological order:

1. 1966 New York City, USA
2. 1968 Paramus, NJ, USA
3. 1988 Thorn, Netherlands
4. 1990 Trenton, NJ, USA
5. 1992 Thorn, Netherlands
6. 1994 Göteborg, Sweden
7. 1996 Bowie, MD, USA
8. 1998 Parigi, France
9. 2000 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
10. 2002 Prague, Czech Republic
11. 2004 Trenton, NJ, USA
12. 2006 Würzburg, Germany
13. 2008 Firenze, Italy
14. 2010 Dallas, TX, USA
15. 2012 Cambridge, UK
16. 2014 Lannion, France
17. 2016 Venice, Italy

For the local ham club I wrote a short article (sorry, only in Dutch) describing all the steps that led to the final result of my low-budget EME setup, and to the succesfull EME contacts I managed to make with it, hoping to inspire others to also try setting up a similar EME station. The article can be found here.

Below the QSL cards received for my EME contact with I2FAK and KB8RQ. Looking at them still fills me with pride!