Book Review: "Big Ear Two -- Listening for Other-Worlds" by John Kraus (1995)

This book is kind of weird, but give it a chance.  The author seems too prone to describe the physical attributes of his colleagues, especially female colleagues.  But he was born in 1910 -- he was an old guy when he wrote this book, so perhaps we should cut him some slack.   And there is one memorable episode where he defends a female applicant.  In spite of the shortcomings, there are many real gems in there, often hidden among the descriptions of 1930's era Kleenex machines and refrigerators.  I picked up the book a long time ago and only read it recently.   

Some highlights: 

-- Crystal Radios in the 1920s. 

--  Working Australia from Michigan on 40 CW in 1927. And waking up his parents to tell them. (Decades later, I did the same thing after a ZL contact).

 

-- Doing a radio propagation survey using the 5 meter band (FMLA!) 

-- Jansky's  discovery of an extraterrestrial hiss in 1932.  (It seems like that was the big discovery,  So why did Penzias get the Nobel prize?) 

-- A youthful trip to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. 

-- A regular ham band schedule from Ann Arbor to Berkeley that featured Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer.

 

-- Lots of mention of Fred Terman,  Grote Reber, and Karl Jansky,

 

-- Some discussion of how Jansky was turned down for a job.  And about how being a radio amateur actually hurt chances for employment; there are a few lines about anti-ham prejudice. 

-- Lots of people known to us show up in the book:  Joe Taylor, Shoemaker and Levy of Shoemaker-Levy 9 fame, Arthur C. Clarke, Maarten Schmidt of "First Light," and many others.   

-- And of course, the WOW signal (that has recently been explained as probably having a natural origin).  

-- Kraus tells of how the Latin words "Ad Astra per Aspera" (to the stars, with difficulty) were engraved above their radio telescope receiving room.  He goes on to (correctly) criticize those who write about radio telescopes, without having ever built one.  Remarkinig on one such critic, John Bolton, a revered Austialian radio astronomer and radio telescope builder, wrote, "If the writer had built a radio telescope his story of radio astronomy would be a different story." 

Here is a good review of Kraus's "Big Ear Two" book: 

https://reeve.com/Documents/Book%20Reviews/Reeve_Book%20Review-Big%20Ear%20Two.pdf

California Typewriter -- Full Movie with Tom Hanks

I think this one is a bit over the top.  They are way too interested in the old typewirters.  The artist who destroys the old machines to make robots and sculptures... the "musical group" that plays songs on old typrwriters... all the people who decry modern digital tech, but then create internet pages that save the old typewriter shops.   But hey, who am I to criticize them?  Some readers really liked the New York Times article on the Bremerton Typewriters Company.  And there is a lot of overlap between these typrewriter fanatics and the many shades of  ham radio fanaticism (boatanchor-oligists, I'm looking at you!)  So here (above) is the full movie.  

One personal note:  My paternal grandmother was part of that original typewriter revolution - she remained proud all of her life of hwer ability to use that machine.  She kept her own typewriter in her house all of her life. And she used it. 

There are  a LOT of YouTube videos about old typewriters and workshops that service them.  Here is one about the last typewriter shop in Melbourne, Australia: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxx6ZutCU5w

 

More Silicon Valley -- Apple, Microsoft, and IBM (video)

 More interesting computer history.  

-- Visicalc and importance of spread sheets. (I remember when I first learned to use one). 

-- Amazing that the guy who wrote the DOS program for IBM can't get a job today. 

-- Sad that the guy who was in the garage with Jobs never got stock options. (Was this ever corrected?) 

-- I liked the observation that the most powerful guy in the room is usually the most poorly dressed guy in the room. 

Silicon Valley -- The Hippies who Built the First PC (full video)

Computers are not really my thing, but the discussion of California culture and how it led to the home computer revolution is very interesting. 

-- Blue Boxes! (I should have made one.) 

-- An old telephone earpiece. (I still have one.) 

 

-- The Free University of Palo Alto (I should have gone there.) 

-- The HOMEBREW Computer Club  (Great use of the word "homebrew.") 

By the mid 1970s, "they were going to change the world not with flowers in their hair, but with soldering irons in their hands." 

Great stuff. 

So hey, BE CAREFUL!

 

The vessel "Tally Ho" sailed into San Francisco bay recently.  They went to a very cool machine shop in Sausalito, where they found this warning sign posted near one of the machines.  Yikes! 

Here is the Tally Ho video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHf9K_dOgsY&t=422s

CuriousMarc Fixes the HP-182C Power Supply -- But More Fun to Come!

I really like how Marc stops and gives an account of all the parts he has changed,  and that he HONESTLY talks about parts that he mistakenly replaced, or replaced when the original turned out to be good.  Too often wizards write about their troubleshooting experiences and conveniently leave out these inconvenient changes.   But this is a big part of the troubleshooting game, and I am really grateful that Marc describes what really happens, WARTS AND ALL! 

I must say, Marc's replacement parts drawers are looking kind of empty.  He needs spare parts for videos like this.   

Wow, plastic polish!  Who knew?  I want some.   

Marc is a ham.  His callsign is AJ6JV. 

This kind of video is ALMOST enough to get me to work on my old HAMEG 'scope. 

In the next video Marc pledges to take on the 1966 trigger circuits.  

John KN6FVK's FB Homebrew SolderSmoke Direct Conversion Receiver -- Crickets Killed with Barkhausen-Be-Gone Spray!

I went to bed worrying about this one. John KN6FVK had been having a lot of problems.  He had repeatedly reported hearing nothing (crickets!) when he fired up the receiver. Members of the Discord group had provided a lot of coaching, but still, CRICKETS!  John had a good sense of humor.  When I pointed out that oscillations in the AF amp are caused by a feedback path that meets "the Barkhausen criteria" John said he went to Lowes and bought a spray can of Barkhausen-Be-Gone.  It seems to have worked.  Actually I think John put some additional capacitance on the DC rail of the AF amp.  In any case, he was going to wait for the evening for test out the fixed receiver.  The time difference with California meant that I went to bed with fingers crossed.  Happily the BBG spray and (more likely) the extra capacitance worked.  John sent us some really nice videos of his receiver in action.  I really like the inscriptions on his pine board.  This should become "a thing."   

John writes:

I'm very ok now.... --- sigh / smile --- THANK YOU ALL for your help and patience. As painful as this was, it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. After I build an actual work bench, I might try this again (looks are important). But I'm definitely going to start playing with it and learning from it. On to Mods and Upgrades! Need to learn-up on this "Barkhausen" silliness too. -73

Here is John's receiver pulling in CW (WB6CGJ):

Congratulations John,  Welcome to the Hall of Fame.  

--------------------------------

Join the discussion - SolderSmoke Discord Server:

https://discord.gg/Fu6B7yGxx2

 

Documentation on Hackaday:

https://hackaday.io/project/190327-high-schoolers-build-a-radio-receiver

 

SolderSmoke YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@soldersmoke

Monitoring Maritime Radio Messages with YADD

 

Click on the image for a clearer view

This is really cool and very easy.  Easy nerd thrills.  

On Friday, Steve VE7SL, put up a blog post on how we can relive the glories of our youth by monitoring HF long-distance maritime traffic.  In the old days the ships were on CW and many report that it was great fun to listen to the various "fists" in action from coastal stations, and from ships on the high seas.  While the CW is long gone, this maritime traffic is still on the air.  Today they are using a SEL call system called Digital Selective Calling or DSC.  

Happily, it is very easy to decode these transmissions.  Steve recommends a program called YADD (Yet Another DSC Decoder).  I downloaded it in seconds and had it installed on my computer in minutes.  Next I had to find a general coverage receiver.  I thought about pressing my old HQ-100 into service, or maybe even the S-38E, but a cooler head prevailed.  I remembered that Farhan had given us a general coverage receiver in his uBITX transceiver.  So it came off the shelf and got powered up.  Around dawn on October 14, 2024 I put the receiver on 8.415 MHz LSB.  I didn't even have to do a real connection to the computer -- I just put the speaker close to the mic and that was sufficient.  

Boom.  Soon I was getting signals from ships afloat and from coastal stations.  I heard Shanghai, New Zealand, and Australia.   See above.   From the U.S., I heard Miami, but the most emotional for me was hearing the station at Pt. Reyes, in California.  This is the station that Dick Dilman W6AWO has volunteered at for many years.  FB.  

Back in 2017, Steve had another post on DSC and YADD: 

https://ve7sl.blogspot.com/2017/08/yadd.html

Thanks Steve! 

This site explains very well what DSC is.  From this I think we can see that there is nothing illegal about using YADD to monitor the DSC alerts (that are all emergency-related):  https://infoshipping.tripod.com/gmdss_dsc.html

Ham Radio in the 1970s (and earlier, with some cool Jazz). What favorite rigs do you see?

Rogier PA1ZZ sent me this today.  I think I may have seen pieces of it before, but this restoration 

is really nice.  But ham radio seems to have been a lot cooler in California.  I don't remember it being so socially advantageous on the East Coast.   See Dilbert cartoon below. 

So many memories: 

-- The video opens with someone working on a QF-1 Q multipliers.  We have destroyed so many of these relics, in pursuit of the variable capacitors (which turn out to be not so good). 

-- A Drake 2-B on Field Day. 

-- An HT-37 in a shack.

--What looks like an HW-32a in a mobile rig. 

-- Maybe an HW-101. 

--  A BC-348. 

-- The ATV station with lots of homebrew gear was very cool. 

-- I also liked the single THERMATRON homebrew CW rig made from an old TV.  FB. 

-- The CW used in the video was all pretty good.  There was a lot of chirp.  This, of course, adds character to a signal.  FB.

After the video, they take a walk down memory lane, looking at ham radio magazines with some cool jazz playing in the background.  I saw a Swan 240 and a D-104.  The debauchery of the 1970s was evident on the magazine covers.  Even QST seemed to be caught up in this.  Check out the August 1975 cover of QST.  

Anyway, this video was a lot of fun.  Thanks Rogier!  

What favorite rigs do you see?   Make note of them in the comments. 

This video and the Dilbert cartoon reminded me of a discussion we had many years ago about THE KNACK: 

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2008/11/cry-for-help-soldersmoke-responds.html

Who can tell us more about Lovelock's homebrew shortwave radio?

"Three years earlier, Lovelock had listened on his homemade shortwave radio in Finchley to the 'beep, beep, beep' transmission of the USSR’s Sputnik, the first satellite that humanity had put into orbit. Now he was playing with the super powers."

From: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/05/gaia-theory-born-of-secret-love-affair-james-lovelock

A bit of a soap opera, but the radio question is, I think,  interesting. 

Pete Juliano's Amazing Videos -- 318 of Them!

Blogs come and go, but (hopefully) YouTube is more permanent and accessible.  This morning I re-found Pete N6QW's YouTube channel.  When you use it, I suggest you click on "oldest" first.  This will take you back 14 years,  to Pete's time in the Pacific Northwest.   The video above (him playing guitar) was shot just before he and his XYL moved back to California.  

Here is Pete's YouTube channel:  

https://www.youtube.com/@N6QW/videos

This is a tremendous resource for ham radio homebrewers.  It should be preserved and protected. 

Subscribe!  

Thanks Pete! 

Eric Schwartz WA6HHQ of Elecraft -- FDIM Interview #4 by Bob Crane W8SX (audio)

 

It was really cool that our correspondent at FDIM caught up with Eric Schwartz WA6HHQ of Elecraft.  Some highlights from the interview: 

-- Eric met Wayne Burdick through the NORCAL 40 (Wayne had designed it, and Eric was writing articles about it).  That was a very influential rig -- it was the basis for a book and a CALTECH course by David Rutledge. 

-- Elecraft has a strong QRP element in its DNA. 

-- The K2 is "Heathkit style" and offers the builder the opportunity to understand the rig at the component level. 

-- Eric says that using something you built yourself is worth at least 10db. 

Here is Bob's interview with Eric:  

http://soldersmoke.com/WA6HHQ23.mp3

Thanks Eric and thanks Bob.  

Apex Surplus in Los Angeles

The Polaroid camera for the Tek 'scope was pretty cool.  And the comments about the Simpson 260 made me feel good about finding one at a recent hamfest, but I don't think mine is an extremely rare Model 2.   

A Surprisingly Good Movie from the Late 1960s: "The Ham's Wide World" (Video)

I found this movie to be surprisingly good.  Narrated by Arthur Godfrey, it features Barry Goldwater, and a lot of other hams.  There is a homebrewer too!  Lots of  old rigs we know and love:  a Drake 2-B, a couple of Galaxy Vs, a Benton Harbor lunchbox, Heathkit SB-series rigs, many Swans, and was that an HQ-170 that I saw in there?  There are also many cool antennas, including a 15 meter quad set up by a bunch of Southern California teenagers. 

Near the end, when they visit ARRL Headquarters, we briefly see none-other-than Doug DeMaw, W1FB!  FB!  

Please take a look at this video and post comments about the rigs, antennas, and radio amateurs that you see in the film. 

Trying to Repair Some Old Gear, He Got Hit with a Dose of LSD!

Oh no, here's something else for us to worry about when working on old gear.  As if the treat of electrocution or radioactive poisoning were not enough, now we have to worry about being hit with a dose of  the 1960's drug culture. That could be one bad trip indeed.  Imagine if you were having a hard time troubleshooting the Buchla Model 100.  All of a sudden things start getting weird and your test gear starts dancing on the bench.  

Fortunately, this is not likely to happen with a rig like the DX-100.  With rigs like that the only similar danger is nicotine poisoning. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/engineer-accidentally-takes-lsd?fbclid=IwAR2KzZl3qoL6oqq5SqWYquKpHR2mGxk2GN2Kk0O-ytUb9MNXmVNX9XnyeaU

Thanks to Stephen Walters for finding this groovy story. 

AA7EE Casually Kills a Direct Conversion Receiver, then Coldly Discards a Diode Ring Mixer

I was really glad to see that Dave AA7EE has -- after a long absence -- posted another article on his blog.   The article has some great personal reminiscences about his involvement with direct conversion receivers.  Here is one passage: 

I spent many happy hours tuning around and listening on 80M with the DSB80. It was this first experience that cemented my affinity for direct conversion receivers built with commercially available diode ring mixer packages. It just seemed so simple – you squirt RF into one port, a VFO into the other, and (after passing the result through a diplexer) amplify the heck out of the result. The seeming simplicity of the process of converting RF directly to baseband audio has held great appeal for me ever since. Unfortunately, that project didn’t survive. One day, in later adulthood, in my apartment in Hollywood, I reversed the polarity of the 12V DC supply and, discouraged at it’s subsequent refusal to work, tossed the whole thing away. Now, I cannot quite believe that I did that, but it was during a long period of inactivity on the ham bands, and complete lack of interest. If only I could go back, and not have thrown it into the dumpster of my apartment building! Hollywood is ridden with recent notable history. My little double sideband transceiver met it’s unfortunate end just 100 feet from the spot where Bobby Fuller, of The Bobby Fuller Four, was found dead in his car, in 1966, the subject of a still unsolved mystery to this day. The death of my little DSB rig was a lot less mysterious. To think that I heartlessly tossed an SBL-1 mixer into a dumpster, is a mark of how far I had strayed from my homebrewing roots, forged in a little village in England. Now, a few years later, in a city known for it’s sin and excess, I had cruelly ended the life of a stout and honest diode ring mixer. I suppose I should spare a thought for the polyvaricon but, well, you know – it was a polyvaricon!

  https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/the-ve7bpo-direct-conversion-receiver-mainframe/

The SolderSmoke Team Talks to the River City Amateur Radio Communication Society (Video)

Pete and I had a great time speaking to this really nice California ham radio club (video of the event appears above).  Special thanks to club president Dr. Carol Milano, MD.  Wow, what an impressive person and ham radio operator she is:  https://www.qsl.net/kp4md/#New%20York

This club is doing a group build of a version of the famed Tuna Tin Two.    I mentioned that I had held the original TTT in my hands, and that Rex Harper had conducted a "Mojo Transfer Ceremony" that imparted TTT Mojo to my BITX17 transceiver (which was also discussed).  I promised to share the video of that momentous event.  Here it is: https://youtu.be/9RZRaFUtTcc

Thanks to Carol and the members of the RCARCS.  This was a lot of fun.  

Another Poem about Radio: Radar Man

 

http://www.alphalpha.org/radar/poem/story.html

Thanks to Allan WA9IRS for sharing this with us. 

QSO Today -- Episode 300 -- Panel Discussion

Congratulations to Eric Guth, 4Z1UG for reaching episode #300 on his QSO Today podcast.  To commemorate the event, Eric organized a panel discussion.   It was a real pleasure and honor to participate.   

Listen to it here:  https://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/300

Thanks again Eric! 

Radio Telescope Homebrewed from Cake Pans and Chicken Wire

 

https://altaonline.com/the-low-tech-search-for-signs-of-intelligent-life/?utm_source=pocket-newtab