From Bill's Apollo 11 Scrapbook

From the Apollo 11 scrapbook I made back in '69. I got the date for the moonwalk wrong. But hey, I was only 10 years old.

SolderSmoke Podcast #211 -- Malicious Code! Spaace! Vintage Sideband! MAILBAG

27 April 2019

SolderSmoke Podcast #211 is available

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke211.mp3

Pete NOT quitting podcast!  Malicious code case RESOLVED! 

Ambiguity and the Digi-Analog Divide

Edwin Howard Armstrong biography 

SPAACE! 
   Apollo 11 50th Anniversary
   Oscar 100 in Geostationary Orbit.  Why can't we have one too? 
   Farhan puts AISAT in orbit.  FB!  
   Space is difficult
   SSTV from the Space Station

Pete's bench report. 

Vintage Sidebanders
    Recording of Midwest Vintage SSB "tune up session" 
    Vintage rigs that sound bad
    Distorted views on "distortion" 

Bill fixing old Bose Wave Radio

NOT GOING TO DAYTON.  AGAIN!  But SolderSmoke rep will be there

75 meter secrets of success (timing is everything!) 

MAILBAG

Steve N8NM sends me FB National Dial
Steve N8NM aspires to complexity -- enough of this simple stuff!
Dave W2DAB goes to Columbia U session on Armstrong, sends FB book. 
Jim W4JED -- reports of QCX sideband a bit exaggerated.  Where is Allison? 
Rob Powell wins beret challenge.  VK2TPM and VK2BLQ also win. CONGRATS!
Colin G3VMU sends nice 1930s radio picture
Alan WA9IRS sends diagram of digi radio signal flow.  CLEAR AS MUD! 
Chris KD4PBJ Grandmother worked at Hammarlund. 
Steve NU0P sends info on Art Collins and the Apollo moonshots. 

Apollo 11 -- The Documentary

My wife is a kind and tolerant person.  Proof of this is that she went with me to see the Apollo 11 documentary that we recently posted about.  

I think you have to be a geek and/or have The Knack to really like a 90 minute documentary with no audio other than Walter Cronkite's reporting and the recorded dialogue among the participants.   But of course, I loved it.  Amazing video, especially of the Saturn V.  

Bob Scott KD4EBM found this great interview with the film maker: 

Video:

https://www.tested.com/science/space/869951-apollo-11-still-untitled-adam-savage-project-31919/

Audio only (downloadable)

https://d2rormqr1qwzpz.cloudfront.net/podcast/stilluntitled_20190319.mp3

SSTV from SPAAAAACE! International Space Station Sends Images

The crew on the space station have been transmitting SSTV images.   This morning I threw together a receiving system:  I used my four element refrigerator tubing quad feeding the an RTL-SDR Dongle with HD-SDR software in the computer.  For the SSTV decoding I downloaded a program from Japan: MMSSTV (very nice).  To get the signal from HD-SDRto MMSSTV I just plugged a cheap little electret computer mic into the computer and taped it to the speaker.  

At 0838 local today ISS flew almost directly over me.   I aimed the quad south-west, and almost as soon as it was above the horizon very strong signals started pouring in.  They produced the first picture (above).  

ISS went silent as it passed over head. I swung the quad to the north-east hoping to catch another image as the station moved away.  That is the second image (below). You can see that I was losing the signal about halfway through.  

The distortion in the video image may be the result of me manually adjusting the receiver for Doppler shift. 

Here is a little video of the action in the shack during the first half of the pass. 

Here is the RTL-SDR Dongle Receiver in an Altoids Box: 

Here is that the programs looked like on the screen -- HDSDR on top, MMSS on the bottom:  

Here is what the orbital pass looked like. ISS was East of New Zealand when I took this picture.  ISS came up over the Eastern Pacific and Mexico before passing over N2CQR.  This display comes from the excellent Heavens Above web site:  

Indie Documentary: Apollo 11

Thanks to Bob Scott for the alert on this.  This new Indie film promises to be even better than the recent "First Man" movie (which was somewhat disappointing, with too much focus on family drama).   Armstrong looks so young in this trailer. 

New Rock Video By Astrophysicist and Queen lead-guitarist Dr. Brian May

We don't carry many music videos on this blog, but this one definitely belongs here.  We've mentioned Brian May several times:  Lead guitarist in the rock group Queen.  PhD Astrophysicist. 

I didn't know that he went to work as a full member of the New Horizons (Pluto and beyond) mission.  

The video is definitely for us -- it features a lot of antennas.   And it includes the computer-generated voice of Stephen Hawkings.  

Read more about Brian's careers and about his latest adventure here: 

https://www.space.com/42875-brian-may-new-horizons-song-ultima-thule-flyby.html

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern poses with astrophysicist and Queen lead guitarist Brian May on Dec. 31, 2018 at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland just before New Horizons flew by Ultima Thule.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

50th Anniversary of Apollo 8 (Great video!)

Chinese AMATEUR Satellites ORBITING THE MOON! Radio Amateurs Receiving Images

This is really amazing and deserves more attention than it has been getting.  

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/china-national-space-administration/contact-lost-with-chinas-dslwp-a1-lunar-microsatellite/

https://amsat-uk.org/tag/dslwp/

https://gbtimes.com/radio-enthusiasts-receive-new-earth-and-moon-images-from-chinese-microsatellite-in-lunar-orbit?fbclid=IwAR2eUGeyyDK7FgalitW5xQxY7TEekbTxRSwg17uwWrEdzBduGQdfARqHfFo

https://twitter.com/bg2_cry

https://twitter.com/bg2bhc

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/dslwp-a.htm

https://destevez.net/2018/06/dslwp-b-detected-with-7-element-yagi/

"First Man" Neil Armstrong Movie Trailer

I think Ryan Gosling is a good choice to play Neil Armstrong.  It looks like this movie will deal with the "right stuff," a concept somewhat related to "the knack." 

Beautiful QSL by Jeff Murray K1NSS

Here's a reminder of the amazing art work of Jeff Murray K1NSS. 
You can have him draw a QSL for you:   Go here:
https://www.jeffk1nss.com/hamgraphics/

Jeff writes: 

Well, I got as far as high school intermediate algebra and then I saw a squirrel.

Thank goodness others like Ken N2WWD were paying attention and went on to surf gravity's rainbow of flight dynamics, all in a day's work and play for rocket scientists. Tandem surfing and professional activities somewhat aside, Ken is also actively involved with ARISS, i.e. Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, the group guiding ham radio operations aboard ISS. So Kelvin cool to work with Ken on this New One, with Ken cooking up a special Easter Egg for all you galactic hitchhikers!

What might I draw with you?https://www.jeffk1nss.com/hamgraphics/

Today: 40th Anniversary of the Launch of Voyager 1

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/          (Thanks Joh!) 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/opinion/pondering-voyagers-interstellar-journeys-and-our-own.html?emc=edit_th_20170905&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=54115026

Audio Clips from N2CQR/HI8 Contacts with MIR Space Station (now in mp3)

Back in 1995 I was in the Dominican Republic.  I used an old 2 meter rig and a homebrew 5 element quad (see below) to talk to U.S. Astronaut Norm Thagard on the MIR space station.  (You may have heard me bragging about this before.) I made a bunch of audio clips from the contacts.  They'd been in the now defunct RealAudio format, but I have been able to convert them to mp3.  You can listen here: 

http://www.gadgeteer.us/CLIPS.HTM

Juno Spacecraft Looks At Jupiter

https://sciencefriday.com/segments/jupiter-surprises-in-its-closeup/

India's Successful Mission to Mars (Video)

NPR's "Science Friday" produced this very nice video on India's successful mission to Mars. Really nice.

Preserving Vanguard 1

Ira Flatow of "Science Friday" was recently talking about how best to preserve important bits of the history of mankind's exploration of space.  Our old friend Vanguard 1 was mentioned several times.  It is now the oldest satellite still in space.

You can listen to the Science Friday show here:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/protecting-the-historic-human-record-in-space/

They also have a transcript of the show on the same page.

SolderSmoke fans will remember the Vanguard adventures of Mike Rainey AA1TJ:

http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search?q=Vanguard

This seems to be the month for Vanguard:  just a couple of weeks ago, on 40 meters I spoke to Dale Parfitt W4OP. Dale was one of the first people to pick up Mike Rainey's Vanguard replica signals (see link above).

AND...

The Vanguard reproduction project came up during Eric Guth 4Z1UG's "QSO Today" interview with Graham Firth G3MFJ of the G-QRP Club:

http://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/g3mfj

(Graham has such a great voice.  He definitely SHOULD build a phone rig!)

VIVA VANGUARD!  
  

NASA'S New Mars Recruiting Posters

More like this one here:
http://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/


Bill,

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/

Sputnik Replica Transmitter, an "Error" in the Sputnik Schematic, and Why 20.005 MHz?

Mark K6HX pointed me to very interesting Hackaday article on Frank PA3CNO's Sputnik transmitter replica.  As blog readers will recall, we went through a period of Sputnik-mania a few years ago:  http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search?q=sputnik  Chief Designer Comrade Mikhail Rainey AA1TJ sent me some of the Russian tubes (like those pictured above). 

The Hackaday article pointed to our post reporting that Oleg RV3GM had found the schematic:

http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2013/04/sputnik-schematic-found.html   Stefan reports that PA3CNO found "an error" in the original Soviet schematic:

http://www.radio.cc/post/Franks-power-supply-for-sputnik    A mistake you say?   HAH, I say!  Hah!  This must have been part of a sinister commie plot to prevent the capitalist imperialists from ever being able to reproduce the glorious transmitter of the Soviet people.  They almost succeeded. 

Just kidding.  

In the course of looking through our old Sputnik posts, I came across a question I posted:

I have a question: OK so the crafty Soviets picked 20.005 MHz for some good reasons: Being so close to the WWV freq, it would be easy for hams and SWLs to find it with precision. In the November/December 2007 issue of "Break In" (from NZ -- thanks Jonathan-san!) ZL3DW notes that this frequency selection would allow a receiver set to exactly 20 MHz to "produce an audio tone plus or minus the Doppler shift without ever going through zero beat." But zero beat with what? Most of the receivers out there would not have had BFOs, right? So the Soviets wouldn't have been using ordinary CW, right? Were they using AM, with the beeps produced by an audio oscillator modulating the carrier? 

Was their diabolical plan to use WWV as the BFO for those using ordinary AM SW receivers?   If so, a 5 kHz separation from WWV seems to be too much right?  Especially when the Doppler shift on approach would push the frequency up a bit. Maybe they just chose this freq to make it easy for listeners to find -- just a bit above WWV.  Comrade Rainey surmised that they were keying the PA stage -- the oscillator "backwave" was at times audible on the ground.

What do you think Comrades?

DSW and 73.

Amazing Space-X Launch. Then watch the rocket COME BACK TO THE PAD

Five Lessons from Pluto for Homebrewers

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-basics/4440230/5-Engineering-Lessons-from-Pluto?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150901&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150901&elq=3e27f3c4018844db9381c8a508867555&elqCampaignId=24586&elqaid=27842&elqat=1&elqTrackId=06ba9f8cc21140c1ae477df75c36dd65

Thanks to Bob Crane, W8SX, for the link to this article.   Those of us who are reading "The Martian" will find the mention of RTG power interesting (but hey, let's not try to put any plutonium in our rigs, OK?) 

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

One more on Gagarin

Bill, Pete,

In keeping with historical events, I have enclosed a few snap-shots from the 1961 Pittsburgh Press dated Wednesday, April 12, 1961.
Yes, a few of us recall that very day. I had filed this newspaper in my Scrap Book back then. It was a bitter sweet thing, to read for most, as we hoped the U.S. to be first but none-the-less, we smiled anyway because, it proved a person could go into space and return. (Flight Breaks Barrier to Space Travel). I was very enthusiastic about Rockets, Travel and current events. I built my own capsule in the rafters of my parents home and spent all day up there in the tiny confines as I launched my own secret adventures into Outer-Space.

Hope you enjoy the photos. I can provide a better set of copies if you are interested.

73's

Harv - WA3EIB
Idaho Falls, ID

Harv:   I converted a small closet into what I saw as an excellent simulator of the Apollo 11 Command Module.  Bill


Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20