On the evening of April 12th Scott N0EDV, a past MVARA member now living in the Bloomer, WI area was in La Crosse, and he gave a 10 GHZ demonstration from Granddad Bluff.
Scott's plan was to do direct path contacts with 3 stations.
Two contacts in the Twin Cities area and the third contact in Elk Mound, WI just west of Eau Claire, WI.
Keep in mind that the full wavelength on 10 GHz is about 3 centimeters in length, so aiming and beamwidth are huge factors. Even leaves on the trees are an effective signal blocking device.
Scott uses a 2 meter all mode radio pulling drive power off of the driver stage bypassing the PA in the radio to drive his transverter.
That power is fed to a feedhorn mounted on an old Directv mini satellite dish with an ERP of 4000 watts.
As with most scheduled contacts of this type they started out the planning via cell phones to coordinate beaconing to each other using CW.
Once contact is established that way they then move onto making contact directly, but typically will keep the cell phone connection going.
As it turned out that evening the first and second contacts weren't able to be made using a direct path, but were successful via rain scatter propagation.
If you're not familiar with rain scatter it's essentially bouncing your signal off of a thunderstorm.
If you look at color radar the red being the most intense part is the best for reflecting signals, with yellow of course being the next best
Scott's first contact after peaking the signal on rainscatter with the CW was on the FM mode. It was very clear and readable considering that CW on rain scatter sounds like CW bounced off of and aurora event with no CW tones audible, only a change in the sound of the white noise. Scott's second contact could only be made by using CW. SSB was tried on the first contact, but was unreadable. The third contact with the Elk Mound station never happened by a direct path, or via rain scatter.
The 10 GHz system has the basic transverter running at 10 mW and an external PA set for 2W out.
The high power transmit signal goes through a 10 GHz isolator to protect the amp from high SWR
Even if you aren't interested in doing 10 GHz operations, (it sure looks like these MVARA guys are) it was a very interesting thing to observe, and something we don't see locally every day.
Scott really enjoys this, and is very good in explaining the hows, whys, and wherefores when asked.
He's also willing to help get anyone going with gear of their own should you decide to give this a try.
Weather radar map showing the tiny rain cells we were using for our 10 GHz rain scatter contacts.
Scott’s YouTube Videos
Video from Granddad Bluff EN43jt, La Crosse Wisconsin (LINK)
Video from Elk Mound Park EN44dv, Elk Mound Wisconsin (LINK)
A very special Thank You! to Scott and the many MVARA members who made this demonstration possible! 
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