The HF Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska, and the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) in New Mexico, conducted a bi-static low frequency lunar radar experiment in October 2007. A brief description of the experiment and an example of the lunar echo radio waves received may be found on the web site mentioned below.
HAARP and LWA conducted additional lunar echo experiment on 19. and 20. January 2008. Interested radio amateurs and short wave listeners were invited to participate in this experiment by listening for the lunar echoes and submitting reports. The following table shows the planned schedule.
HAARP-LWA Experiment Schedule
19 January 2008
05:00-06:00 UTC - 6.7925 MHz
06:00-07:00 UTC - 7.4075 MHz
20 January 2008
06:30-07:30 UTC - 6.7925 MHz
07:30-08:30 UTC - 7.4075 MHz
The HAARP transmitter transmitted for the first two seconds of the five seconds cycle. The next three seconds were quiet to listen for the lunar echo, then HAARP transmitted again for two seconds ... and the whole cycle repeated for the first hour on first frequency. During the second hour, this periodic five second cycle was repeated on the second frequency.
Transmissions bounced of the Moon were heard with 2 second delay, because the Moon is more than 300 000 km from the Earth, so radio signal needed 2 seconds to travel all the way to the Moon and back to our planet.
I participated on the test on January 20 using my FT-847 and a quarter-wavelength vertical antenna for 7 MHz band with one elevated radial pointing towards the Moon (approx. azimuth 279 deg.). Moon was high, elevation angle between approx. 55 deg. to 30 deg. during the experiment. Attached screenshots are from the WSJT software, commonly used for VHF EME.
I was able to copy the HAARP signal on both test frequencies. First picture shows the signal bounced of the Moon, the EME signal, not the terrestrial one, because the cycle started with 2 second transmittion, but my decode shows 2 second delay at the begin of every minute (signal was approx. 15 dB below noise level at the time of taking the first snapshot):
I copied second signal, coming the usual, terrestrial way, without time delay couple of times during both test periods. Following picture shows it almost between the dashes of the first signal.
The second signal came through "terrestrial" path. Thanks to continuous change of distance between the Moon and the Earth, bounced signal came beck with its frequency shifted. This is known as the "Doppler effect" and calculated shift for that night and frequency was approximately 10 Hz (HAARP calculated 7 Hz). HAARP also published their power and gain calculations on their web site. It can be
found here.
Following pictures should help to understand what is on the “waterfall”.