DL7APV - Silent Key
It was sad to hear about the passing of Bernd, DL7APV who was a well known figure on the VHF & UHF bands. As can be seen from the image above, he built an impressive antenna array for the 432 MHz band which allowed him to make contacts with many radio amateurs around the world by bouncing signals off the moon.
The array for 70cms was made up of 128 x 11-element Yagi antennas which had a calculated gain of 33.7 dBd.Β He first got a licence in 1975, made his first moon bounce contact on 432 MHz in 1983, got DXCC on 432 MHz in 2012 and finally worked all 50 US states in 2016, all from his home in Germany.
Bernd was also a very active FM-DXer and built an impressive 8 x 9-element array for the 88-108 MHz band.