Podcasting since 2005! Listen to Latest SolderSmoke
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
SST -- QRP On The Beach
Monday, June 14, 2021
Santo Domingo Shack on 12th Floor Balcony -- SST QRP CW
Sunday, May 30, 2021
QRP - QRP Contact from Dominican Republic
Sunday, March 28, 2021
"The Dish" Turns 60
Saturday, February 20, 2021
A Step Closer to the Elser-Mathes Cup? Ham Receives Signals from Mars
Sunday, December 20, 2020
The Parkes Radio Telescope Picks Up a Possible "Wow" Signal from Proxima Centauri (maybe)
An article about SETI and our favorite dish. From Scientific American:
Saturday, December 19, 2020
A Very Clever Way to Build a Moxon for 17 and 20 meters
Jim AB9CN sent us Dan Zimmerman N3OX's page in response to my plea for help in SolderSmoke #227. I think this is a very clever and attractive way to cover both bands with a single Moxon.
http://www.n3ox.net/projects/2017moxon/
Of course there are other ways to do this -- other listeners wrote in with confirmation that it is indeed possible to nest a 17 meter element inside a 20 meter Moxon (as is done routinely with Hex beams), but this requires a lot of cut-and-try tuning of both antennas. More in this in future posts. Thanks Jim, and thanks to all who wrote in.
I kind of like the N3OX approach. I think his design makes it more of a workbench electronic project, as opposed to a mere wire and coax antenna project. But hey, that's just me.
Saturday, December 5, 2020
Adding 10 kHz of Coverage to My BITX 17
Friday, December 4, 2020
The Terrible Collapse of the Arecibo Dish: Climate Change, Hurricane Maria, and Funding Cuts. Also: China's New Dish
From https://www.thewrap.com/watch-crazy-footage-of-the-arecibo-observatory-collapse-goldeneye-video/ :
"Alas, over the 2010s it was battered by a series of severe, climate change-linked tropical storms and hurricanes, culminating in terrible damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Unfortunately the 2016 election led to a government unwilling to fund repairs. Though new sources of funding were cobbled together late in 2018, in late Nov. 2020 it was determined there was no way to safely repair the telescope and the National Science Foundation announced it would be decommissioned.
The decommissioning was supposed to proceed after NSF determined the safest possible method, but physics had other plans. So it is that on Dec. 4, the whole thing up and collapsed with almost no warning."
More info (from NSF):
https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/arecibo/index.jsp
Here is a good 2017 article that discusses the electronic and mechanical arrangements at Arecibo, and the budget cuts it was facing. The article seems to almost predict the collapse:
Here is a comment from someone who worked there and heard the collapse:
Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it, told the Associated Press news agency of the moment the telescope collapsed on Tuesday.
"It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was," he said. "I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control... I don't have words to express it. It's a very deep, terrible feeling." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55147973?fbclid=IwAR3RuwzTfJmqInrOOFB-nctknDzyB_VSr_qdNrjg9LbbxUnAbynKBv9stPQ
Here is an interesting WIKIpedia article on China's FAST dish, with comparisons to Arecibo:
Friday, November 27, 2020
6EQUJ5 -- SNR, the Big Ear Radio Telescope, and the "Wow" Signal
This Hack-A-Day article explains the significance of 6EQUJ5 on the paper readout of the Big Ear radio telescope. It is a signal-to-noise readout.
The article also has interesting information about the radio telescope that was used.
I have on my shelf John Kraus W8JK's wonderful book "Big Ear Two -- Listening for Other Worlds." John Kraus is the guy who built the Big Ear. In a reminder of how new radio technology really is, Kraus got his start in radio as a ten year-old boy in 1920. He ripped the wire out of the ignition coil of a Model T Ford to make a tuning coil for a crystal radio. He took the earpiece out of the family telephone. His father gave him a chunk of Galena. He used the crystal radio to listen to the early broadcasts of WWJ in Detroit.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
The Dish -- Virtual Tour -- New Indigenous Name
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Listening in on the Deep Space Network
Not long ago we took the DISH satellite antenna off our roof. For a while I resisted pleas to put the big thing on the curb for pickup. I fantasized about using it for radio astronomy. In the end, I threw it away. I do have VHF/UHF aspirations, but being able to use that dish just seemed to be something in my distant future (if ever!).
But check out what David N2QG is doing with his dishes: He is listening to very distant spacecraft normally picked up only by NASA's Deep space network. Very cool. Truly inspirational.
Here are the links:
http://www.prutchi.com/2020/10/15/recap-of-x-band-dsn-activities-and-plans-for-the-future/
http://www.prutchi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/DSN_Lessons-_Learned_N2QG.pdf
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Solar Cycle 25 - The Gleissberg Cycle Dashes Hopes for a Big Solar Max
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Very Cool Vosworx AZ-EL Satellite Tracker
When I was in the Dominican Republic working the RS satellites, MIR and the Space Shuttle, I didn't have an elevation rotator. I could only move the antenna in the azimuth plane. So I just aimed it about 45 degrees above the horizon, spun it around, and hoped for the best. I also had no computer control of the azimuth heading -- I'd just watch the location of the satellite on my computer screen and operate the rotator control manually.
This device is a big improvement.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Saturday, June 27, 2020
SolderSmoke Podcast #223 Field Day, Club Talks, Patreon, NanoVNA, Farhan Video, SPRAT, BIG MAILBAG
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Lobes, Nulls, and "Gain Dipoles" -- Testing the Theory with WSPR
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Jerry's Sproutie: A Short Wave Receiver (and a Limerick) by Jerry KI4IO
Friday, June 5, 2020
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Antennas, Money, and Ham Psychology
make it fit. (on the back fence).
WIth 5 watts CW on 40m I can hit the USA reverse beacons most mornings.
It was about £9 ($11) to make - but if you count the Spiderbeam
12m pole, it was another £98 ($120).
I have a little George Dobbs story relating to aerials. Probably around
him and have a beer with afterward.