The LED, as seen from 250m

I left the LED TX at my parent's, waited for the night to come, then asked them to fire it up and beam it towards me. Currently the TX draws 36mA. This is the view from the farthest window:

And zooming in... the LED signal is there:

The picture was taken with a 2MP cameraphone without any optical zoom. At the naked eye (not fully adjusted to darkness) the beam was a bright red spot. With a tripod it could be possible to keep the maximum intensity in the right direction. Distance: approx 250 metres.

I couldn't try a reception test because the RX circuit is being boxed and adapted for a telescope mount. Fortunately I've met an enthusiastic amateur astronomer that now wants to become famous by breaking the world optical record. Simone might even learn morse code :-)

Meanwhile I'm slowly building a second TX-RX pair, with the TX capable of sending FSK for an RTTY test.