Stumbled upon this paper after reading about the project in the latest edition of everyones favourite news outlet The Daily Sport Practical Wireless.
Amazingly the folks behind this were not the first to do EVE. I didn’t think it had been done before. They also faced a lot of technical problems, yet still pulled off a huge coupe.
Who’d have thunk it? Anyone for an EPE (Earth Pluto Earth) bounce?
Extra points for bouncing a signal from the WW2 bomber that was found there 
I’m not sure I’d fancy trying to carry all the gear for a a SOTA EVE activation. I suppose a large dish could be useful on the descent of a snowy summit
Ian
ISTR that the first signals bounced off venus were in 1958.
Brian,
Yes in 1958 MIT used a high power RADAR and an 84 ft dish to get range measurements of Venus. Transmissions were about 5 minutes long, equal to the EVE transit time. I haven’t any info on the frequency used nor the power but I’d be confident it was a lot more than 1,500 W given the noise figures of the Rx in those days.
The recent achievement by amateurs is very notable - the path loss is huge, 345 dB as noted in the report on the amateur test.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Hi Ron, who was this?
Geoff vk3sq
Geoff,
I left out the dots. Sorry if that confused you.
M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Has a good reputation for technical innovation.
Massachusetts is a tiny US state about half the size of Tasmania with a population the same as Victoria. Boston is its main city.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
…along with a B reg Austin Montego with a slipping clutch pedal, a Swan Teasmaid and Maria Whittaker? 
There was also another experiment:
The Morse Message was a series of brief radio messages in Morse code that were transmitted from the Evpatoria Planetary Radar (EPR) complex and directed to the planet Venus in 1962 …
…The signals reflected off the surface of Venus and were received back on Earth 4 minutes, 32.7 seconds and 4 minutes, 44.7 seconds later (for the November 19 and November 24 broadcasts, respectively).
The wavelenght was 39 cm and the output power 50 kW continuous, antenna was 8x mirror array.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_Message_(1962)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluton_(complex)
Not forgetting the Soviet missions to Venus in the late 1970’s until 1982. OK so not really in the same vicinity as amateur radio EVE, but still, probably the only (SSTV?) images we will likely ever have of the surface of Venus.
From Price et al., Science 129, Mar 1959, “Radar Echoes from Venus”:
Frequency 440 Mc/s
Pulse duration 2 ms
Peak power 265 kW (klystron)
84-foot paraboloid (Lincoln Lab, Millstone Hill), 37.5 dB gain
RX (solid state maser) T_sys 170 K
They show a plot of two pulse trains which are frankly not convincing. Indeed, I understand both Price’s result and the claimed 1959 detection by Evans & Taylor at Jodrell were later repudiated. Goldstone, Jodrell (my late colleague John Ponsonby) and other observatories made detections in 1961. At JB that had 5 kW CW into the Mark I at 410.25 Mc/s and T_sys 1100 K.
(Ponsonby et al. MNRAS, 128, 1963, “Radar Observations of Venus and A Determination of the Astronomical Unit, 1962”)