Back in 1964 (corrected - thanks John!), the amateur community benefited from 2m and 70cm EME QSOs using the huge dish in Puerto Rico usually used for astronomy research. At the time it was the biggest radio telescope in the world. Many people managed EME QSOs that would have been impossible with smaller antennas.
Sadly the antenna collapsed and will not be rebuilt.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory.
It was actually June 13th & 14th 1964.
ReplyDeleteAmong the stations worked was G2HCG on 144MHz and G3LTF on 432MHz
A long read on the history of amateur moonbounce is here:
https://www.ok2kkw.com/eme1960/eme1960eng.htm
John G4SWX