Just go to http://soldersmoke.com. On that archive page, just click on the blue hyperlinks and your audio player should play that episode.
http://soldersmoke.com
Damn. Just as Mars gets close enough for me to see something with my 6 inch reflector telescope, a massive dust storm hits. I was out there this morning at 0430 local. Mars was bright and red in the southern sky, but when I got it in the telescope's field of view it was like looking at a red version of Venus -- just the disk, with no surface features visible. The before-and-after pictures above (taken with far better equipment than mine) shows the extent to which the dust has obscured things on Mars.
But Sky and Telescope reports that the Martian skies may soon be clearing. Hooray!
June 23, 2018 SolderSmoke Podcast #205 is available: http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke205.mp3 -- Summer solstice. Mars Observations. Graduations. Internships. Fathers Day. -- Antenna Angst: Pete's tribander and Bill's Moxon. Insulation and resonance? -- Pete's work on color displays. -- Bill goes back to fix up older projects: -- Fixing the Frankenstein Phasing RX. Found an open choke! -- Tightening up the HRO Dial. -- Achieving Juliano Criteria stability on a BITX20 VFO. -- Lexicon additions: "Scratch Built" "Hardrock Radio" https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/39551/where-does-the-saying-made-from-scratch-originate -- PastaPete: http://www.pastapete.com/
MAILBAG: Bob Crane W8SX Corrspondent at FDIM Ralph AB1OP Building LBS Bruce KC1FSZ Digital Pot Jason W5IPA uBITX in Juliano Blue Rogier KJ6ETL ON THE AIR WITH A uBITX Special thanks to Tim Walford for 25 years of Hot Iron.
Doesn't this fabulous artwork remind you of the 1950-60's era and the intense interest we all had in space and spacemen? http://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/ I recall there was so much inspiring artwork showing men in spacesuits, even though at the time it was before we had put men in obit around the earth never mind set foot on our moon. Packets of breakfast cereal came with plastic model spacemen and rockets.
It struck me that amateur radio will play a huge part for those who venture to Mars and Phobos, as they will need the type of people who have the practical abilities to improvise and repair equipment while severely restricted in the availability of spare parts.
NASA should do a poster showing an intrepid Mars Soldersmoker with his workbench with some piece of electronic equipment in pieces. 73 David GM4JJJ ------------------- Jeff K1NSS? http://www.dashtoons.com/
Thanks to my Michael EI0CL for alerting us to this. It will happen today, very conveniently at lunchtime on the East Coast of North America. I may have to bring my Soviet binoculars to work. Details here: http://spaceweather.com/ It has already been a nice day for astronomy here in the wilds of Northern Virgina. National Public Radio on Sunday alerted me to the fact that Mars is high in the pre-dawn sky. Our friend Armand e-mailed alerting me to possible clear skies this morning. The leaves are down and no longer obstructing my view of the Southern sky. With my six inch telescope I got a very nice view of Jupiter and the four Galilean moons. We are pretty far away from Mars at this point, so I could see no surface feaures, but it is always nice to see that distinctively red disk. And Venus is poised to disappear behind the moon. Good luck with Venus and the Moon. Please send in reports.
And speaking of occultations, check this one out (thanks to Farhan for the alert):
The moon passed between Nasa's Deep Space Climate Observatory and the Earth, allowing the satellite to capture this rare image of the moon's far side in full sunlight. We normally don't see this side of the moon. As the moon is tidally locked to the earth and doesn't rotate, we only ever see the one face from the earth. Awesome shot!
I liked this interview a lot, and I am sure SolderSmoke listeners will like it too. Weir admits to NOT having the Knack, but Mark Watney clearly does have it.
I realize I'm very late in reading this book. Billy read it last winter. The movie is already coming out. I guess I didn't see the Knack element in this story until I saw the movie trailer. Wow. This is a book and movie for us. Dude is stranded on Mars and has to fix the radio (with Hendrix playing in the background). I'm reading the book now (appropriately, on my I-phone). I find myself thinking about the Elser-Mathes Cup.
From the Wiki article:
Andy Weir, the son of a particle physicist, has a background in computer science. He began writing the book in 2009, researching related material so that it would be as realistic as possible and based on existing technology.[4] Weir studied orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of manned spaceflight.[6] He said he knows the exact date of each day in the book.[7]
Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website.[4] At the request of fans, he made an Amazon Kindle version available at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price).[4] The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had been previously downloaded free.[4][7] This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to Crown in March 2013 for over a hundred thousand dollars.[4]
The book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list on March 2, 2014 in the hardcover fiction category at twelfth position.[
I was one of the millions of people who woke up that Christmas morning in 2003 thinking not of Santa Claus but of Colin Pillinger's Mars Lander, the Beagle 2. We were in London by then, and later on I got to meet Colin Pillinger. I still have the books about Beagle 2 that he gave to me. Wow, it looks like they came very close. Too bad Colin did not live to see these pictures. The Planetary Society has a very good article on all this: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/01160800-beagle-2-found.html
Congratulations to the Indian Space Research Organization. They put a spacecraft into Mars orbit on their first attempt, and they are getting back some spectacular images. I also like the banner on their web site:
I took this book with me to the Dominican Republic this summer, and I really enjoyed it. Kessler has an unusual, very funny, self-deprecating writing style. He is not a scientist nor an engineer, but he is given access to the inner sanctums of the Mars Phoenix mission, and spends an entire summer watching and documenting the work of the people running this mission.
Jim, K1KJW, and others alerted me to this very cool move by the inventive minds at JPL. They put a Morse Code pattern in the tire treads of the Curiosity rover. So now as it drives around, it spells out JPL in the Martian regolith. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120829f.html
Maybe it's because I've done some parachuting myself... I was really blown away by this picture. Taken by the Mars Orbiter as Curiosity descended. And here is the initial low-res video from the rover itself. Very cool.
The Olympics are fun but the real big event tonight will be the rover Curiosity's landing on Mars. What an amazing machine! The Atlantic has a collection of photos guaranteed to get you psyched for the descent to Mars and the exploration that will follow. Fingers crossed!
Good times for astronomy in Northern Virginia. The temperature is freakishly high, and daylight savings time has pushed the darkness into my early-morning shack time. My telescope troubles are sorted out, and I just discovered that with my current contact lens prescription, my right eye is much better for telescope work than the left. (Who knew!) I found an excellent and inspirational book on astronomy: "The Four Percent Universe." And this morning, while fooling around with my Stellarium program, I noticed that Saturn is high in the South-West before dawn. Coffee cup in hand I went out and was rewarded with a spectacular view of the ringed planet. I could even see one of the divisions between the rings. Titan was also visible. Last night Maria and I were looking at Mars. I can make out the ice cap and (vaguely) some the big valley features. No canals.
"SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" is now available as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle.
Here's the site:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V9FIVW
Wireless sound mixing
-
I don't go out to see bands very much but recently we attended a dinner and
show by The Martini Set. It was an enjoyable evening but what caught my eye
was...
April 27, 2024. Tubes or Transistors?
-
A recent acquaintance and newfound friend suggested I cover the tube versus
transistor dilemma. Some Blog readers may even be saying why are you
wasting my...
Power standing wave null… solution
-
Power standing wave null… more left readers with “homework” to create the
Pfwd and Prev traces. Remember that Pfwd and Prev are interpretations in
the cont...
Did you know there’s a new MTR-3B in the works–?
-
A reader reached out to me this morning asking about the Mountain Topper
MTR-3B. It reminded me of a teaser LnR Precision posted earlier this month
in an M...
We’re a garage band, we come from garageland
-
Hi, FastRadioBurst 23 here letting you know of a couple of our shows this
week. On Sunday 28th April 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then
at 2000...
An Inline RF Step Attenuator for QRPp Work
-
I don’t need to explain the attraction of low power operation; if you’re
reading this, the chances are that you are already a convert. I’ve been
operating ...
Using an external clock with the RX-888 (Mk2)
-
*The RX-888 (Mk2) and external clocking*
*Figure 1:*
The RX-888 with external clock input *(right)*
The enable/disable switch is barely
visible behind the...
A 51S-1 Restoration Story
-
I came across my Collins 51S-1 in a big junkyard in Ankara, Turkey around
2012. It was in a pile with a lot of other electronic scrap, probably from
one o...
New QRP Cluster Online From OM0ET and OM6APN
-
By DX EXPLORER
DX EXPLORER
Paul OM0ET and Peter OM6APN recently launched a new cluster dedicated to
QRP operations. Have a look and I hope you will enjoy...
3D Printing The Hadley 114mm Newtonian Telescope
-
Yes, we’re building a 3D Printed Newtonian Telescope called Hadley. It’s
being printed in PETG and in the video below, I give a quick tour. My build
isn’...
3D printed project boxes
-
I have been busy with some other things that have kept me away from
electronics projects for quite a while. Now I can get back to them, but
realize I n...
Daylight Again – An all Analog Radio
-
What’s all this? In 10 seconds, A high performance, 7MHz, 5 watt SSB rig
Draws just 24 mA of current 90 dB dynamic range, 80 dB close-in dynamic
range 3D ...
Adding Enclosure to your sBitx Boards Order
-
The early buyers of the sBitx board set who bought it for $270 USD might
want to also add the enclosure (box) for in the kit. What you will now get
is a f...
Digi-chirp! Digital synthesis of ‘nostalgic’ CW
-
The bottom ends of 80, 40 and 20m are not what they used to be. For
starters, the busiest part is the digital segment where computers talk to
computers – l...
-
A Simple Speech Processor
(For QRP/SSB Homebrew Transceivers )
Over the last few weeks I had been thinking to build a small AF speech
processor to add to...
A New Look for your uBitx!
-
Adding a "Cool Blue" Display to your uBitx!
The standard "green background" with black lettering frequently reminds me
that I suffer from Chronic seasickn...
Posts
