Hacker News Reader

Sure, but that's not as fun as the, uh, "organic" connection you can make over radio.

He's wrong. You don't need to use the internet to talk to someone from Australia. Using HF radio you can talk all over the world just using the Earth's ionosphere.

Or V/U/SHF - there's this big, passive repeater in the sky known as the Moon.

(Earth-Moon-Earth communication, or moonbounce, is basically to aim your antennas at the Moon and blast as much RF as you can muster at it, in the hopes that someone will pick up your echoes as the arrive back at Earth 2.5 seconds later.)

Anyone having the Moon over their horizon at the same time as Australia does should have a fair shot at working an Aussie at 144MHz and above.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com