An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end (2011)

First of all - many amateur radio operators take great interest in having been in contact with lots of countries and territories.

Some are trivial - I just checked, so far this year I’ve got some 80 German stations in my log - some are exceedingly rare (Like Bouvet. Or North Korea, as the authorities there have a less than enlightened stance on individuals communicating with the outside world.)

The din you’d hear if you tuned a radio receiver to a frequency used by the Bouvet exoedition would be similar to what you’d hear if you ventured into a stadium packed with tweens and yelled that you had tickets for a Bieber meet and greet to whoever wanted them the most - literally tens of thousands of operators calling them at once - some for the associated bragging rights, some for testing their station’s capabilities...

More specifically about the moonbounce thing - that is HARD; you blast as much power as you can get hold of into the biggest, most badass antenna you can afford, and then, if the stars align, the gods smile &c - your signal is strong enough to get reflected back to earth where someone else may hear it (if they, too, went through major inconveniences to hone their antenna badassery enough to pick up a gnat’s fart from half a million miles away.

There’s hardly any rational reason why one would do such a thing, but the sense of accomplishment once you nail it is indescribable.