Party Like its 1957! (with the Sputniks on 21.060 MHz)

Steve "Snort Rosin" Smith sent me this very creative reminder that the Sputnik Replica On-The-Air event is scheduled to continue for the same length of time that the original transmitter was on the air. That means we have until October 26 to work or to listen to these magnificent replica rigs. (Hey, maybe I'll get my HW-7 into the action!) See you on 21.060 MHz Comrades! 73 and DSW!

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"Spine Tingling" Sputnik Recordings From 1957

Doug, W8NFT, sent me this booklet and copies of the recordings that came with it. Below you will find links to the booklet itself and the two mp3 files. Note that the signals were captured using an HRO receiver. Side A is a "re-creation" of the launch ("spine tingling in its realism!!!!") Side B is an actual recording of the sat's iconic beeping.

http://soldersmoke.com/Sputnik Booklet.PDF

http://soldersmoke.com/Sputnik Side A.mp3

http://soldersmoke.com/Sputnik Side B.mp3

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ON6WJ's Sputnik Rig

I think Jos's rig is magnificent. He is getting the high voltage for the tubes from a cheap (3 Euros!) 12 Volt to 120 Volt DC/DC inverter that he picked up via e-bay. (I think you can see the inverter board to the left of the headphone jack.) He runs it from a 12 volt gel cell. The little battery is for the filaments. He gets about 700 mw out, and had a very solid 15 minute QSO with Jim, W1PID yesterday. FB Jos!

More Sputnik news (with some audio from the original) tomorrow.

DSW to all!

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Listening for Sputniks, Watching a Satellite

I felt like a junior high school kid yesterday, rushing into the shack, firing up the old rigs, anxious to tune in some special stations. It was Sputnik Anniversary Day! 15 meters was still in pretty good shape at 2315 UTC. On the trusty Drake 2-B I could hear W1AW's code practice session a bit above the Sputnik frequency of 21.060 MHz. All of a sudden WA5TCZ was booming in, calling CQ Sputnik! OM Darron later e-mailed and let me know that he wasn't running a replica rig -- like me, he was looking for them.

This morning, inspired by all this space activity, I pulled out my newly cleaned and collimated telescope and took a tour of the skies of Northern Virginia. Jupiter is very bright in the East (I could see the Galilean moons in my finder scope!) Mars is in the West, but is too far away for any detail to be seen in my 'scope -- it is just a little red disk. I had to go out into the street to position the 'scope for the great nebula in Orion. At 1023UTC the International Space Station flew over -- I watched it disappear into the sunrise. A good morning indeed.

I have a suggestion: Can the Sputnik event be extended through the weekend to give more people the chance to tune in these magnificent rigs?

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Sputnik!!! SolderSmoke 138!!!

Today is Sputnik Anniversary Day! Michael, AA1TJ, and his intrepid international band of solder melters will be putting their homebrew Soviet-parts rigs on 15 meters! I will be listening with my HQ-100. This is all discussed on SolderSmoke 138, which I have just uploaded:

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke138.mp3

October 4, 2011
A Meteor and Jupiter: Cosmic Birthday Present!
Sagan's Pale Blue Dot -- Lots of interesting radio info
On the cover of "Hot Iron"!!!!
The HW-7 Philosophy and Way of Life
Sputnik Anniversary
Getting my 2B back on 17
Preparing for a return of sunspots and 17 meters
Raiding Radio Shack (for 2N2222s!)
The Autumn SPRAT
MAILBAG

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More Homebrew Tubes -- This Time from Poland

That's a homebrew triode built in an apartment workshop by the intrepid Polish radio wizard Aleksander Zawada. The last line in the blog post really got to me:

"All is needed now is to solder a socket to the base of the triode, and use it to make (for example) a regenerative radio receiver!"

Check it out: http://lekernel.net/blog/2011/09/prywatna-wytwornia-lamp-where-diy-meets-vacuum-electron-devices/

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Mystic Steampunk Icelandic Radio Symbology

Mike, KC7IT, alerted me to this one. Check out the decoration on the top of this box. The artist explains:

"The electrolytically etched brass plate on top of the box depicts symbols used in science, engineering, and alchemy. An Icelandic Vegvísir is featured prominently surrounded by the components of a modern magnetron microwave transmitting tube. The background features the schematic diagram for a vintage Heathkit oscilloscope. The Vegvísir is often thought of as a mystical symbol but it is in fact a very practical mnemonic device for mastering navigational rules of thumb."

Billy has been interested in the whole "steampunk" thing (he will be a steampunk guy on Halloween) so this one caught my eye. It also made me think that we need to jazz up those Altoid tins! (Speaking of boxes, while I had the 2-B on the bench yesterday, I took its old metal case out to the garage and gave it several coats of black paint. It looks wonderful.)

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A Good Day in the Shack -- 2B Fixed, SPRAT Arrives

The temperature has dropped to around 10 C today. Fall is in the air. So it was appropriate for me to do some work on an old tube radio. (Several of our correspondents have reported similar seasonal urges to melt solder and to heat filaments.) This week my trusty Drake 2-B was giving me trouble on 17 meters. It was working on all other bands, but not on 17. Today I put it on the bench, pulled out the schematic and started troubleshooting. I quickly determined that the problem was, in fact, with the 22 MHz crystal. The 2-B has a 24.5 MHz rock for tuning the lower portion of the ten meter band. When I put that crystal in the "E" socket (where the 22 MHz crystal normally sits), the local oscillator worked just fine. Putting the 22 MHz rock back in the E socket resulted in no oscillation. And when I tried to the 22 MHz crystal in the 10 Meter socket normally used by the 24.5 MHz rock... nothing. What causes a perfectly good crystal to go bad like this?

Consulting the 2-B manual, I saw that I could also tune the 17 meter band by using (in socket D) a 14.21 MHz crystal from my junk box (it had been used in my 20 meter NE-602 DSB. transceiver). It works great. I'm listening to DK9KW calling CQ on 17 right now. Makes me want to fix up my homebrew 17 meter transmitter. (I need a final for it, and am thinking of using Farhan's JBOT circuit). I may even buy some telescoping fishing poles and rebuild my Azorean rotate-able dipole (I have the mast and the wooden center support for the fishing poles). This magnificent antenna is shown above, spreading its wings above Sao Miguel island in the Azores (our home from 2000--2003).

Icing on the cake: I went out to the mailbox, and, instead of the usual pile of bills, there was a SPRAT 148 and the G-QRP Club's Members Handbook.

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Oscillating Light Bulbs

Oh man, this is some fascinating stuff: old light bulbs found to be oscillating at VHF! Wayne, VA7AT, stumbled upon this phenomenon at age 13 while engaged in Knack activities. Now Joe Sousa explains the physics behind the emissions that caused Wayne's light bulb to interfere with the broadcast of baseball games. How long until AA1TJ has one of these bulbs on the air, making contacts? There is much in this that would appeal to Michael: light bulbs, weird physics, translations from German... You gotta love the BNC connector plugged directly into the bulb. Check it out the radio museum article here.

Hi Bill

There was a question posted on Antennex E-mail discussion group talking about how a vacuum type light bulb will oscillate and radiate RF at about 100MHZ. This answered the question I had since I was a boy of 13 experimenting with a light bulb in series with an electrolysis bath (aluminum electrodes with table salt dissolved in water) and 117vac. The bulb dimmed with the electrodes apart and at a certain position the radio I had on blanked out with fissing sound. I had to shut down the experiment quickly because the neighbors were listening on their favorite baseball game and cussed loudly .

I now know what happened on that fateful day. Here is a site I found about the oscillating light bulb http://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/rustika_lightbulb_fm_measurements.html

Wayne VA7AT

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Sputnik Rigs Cross the Pond, Cambridge to Cambridge

The Chief Designer, Michael, AA1TJ, alerted us to this wonderful post on Roger, G3XBM's blog:
http://g3xbm-qrp.blogspot.com/2011/09/sputnik-across-atlantic-today.html
We clearly see the spirit of the International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards in Roger's comment: "Nice to think that valves used in missiles aimed at each other in the Cold War end in bringing friendship and joy. CW is a wonderful mode if you want simple equipment capable of DX." Indeed. Well done!

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Google, Supernovas... and DRAKES

I liked this ad for Google, but I now have the urge to decapitate my garden shed. Check out dad's Drake gear. Late in the clip you can see some beam antennas on a tower near the house.

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ALL the Bell System Tech Journals -- FREE!

Thanks to Dave, N8SBE, for alerting us to yet another tech treasure trove:

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/

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