[wolvoleo]

Pretty cool. And expensive. It's pretty amazing how starlink sells basically this for $200. Pretty sure they subsidize it.

Ps you don't really need this. A phased array is great for communicating with or tracking fast moving objects. For something as slow as the moon a simple parabolic dish, either manually aimed or with an az/el motor will be more cost-effective. Motors get expensive too with wind and rain and longevity (moving around 24/7) but hams don't moonbounce constantly.

Starlink sats move really quickly through the night sky and it tracks multiple so you don't have interruptions this is why for that purpose a phased array is great. For incidental ham use to the moon it's very interesting tech but not exactly necessary.

[infinitewars]

Well this is roughly 2 thousand times higher power than a Starlink user terminal.

Aand of course it's open source, https://github.com/open-space-sdr/main/

[wolvoleo]

Is starlink that low power? The whole array of this one is 1.5kW. I thought starlink would be at least a few watts especially considering its bandwidth.

Yeah it's impressive and I know hams often spend a lot of money on gear. I don't though (I don't even do HF) but it's certainly cool to see.

But for incidental moon tracking I don't really see the need for a phased array other than the cool factor and the knowledge gained building it. Which are perfectly good reasons to do it of course! Just not technical ones.