From The Guys Who Found the Nano-Sail Satellite Signal

Howdy Bill, and all the SolderSmokers listening in on the PodCast.

We appreciate the shoutout in #130 about the NanoSail-D excitement .!. Stan - N4PMF and I have been working over the last year or so to re-activate the Amateur Radio Club at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. We both have day jobs in the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC), and routinely interface with the scientists and developers involved with projects such as the International Space Station, Space Shuttle propulsion, and more recently the FastSat program.

The NanoSail project is actually a smaller satellite that was carried into orbit by the FastSat. This NanoSail vehicle is only about 18 inches long, and a few inches square. No room there for high powered S-Band telemetry transmitters, so it carried a ham licensed 1/2 watt FM transmitter in the 70cm band. Maybe later we can get into more detail about all that if you are interested.

The NanoSail is the first successful deployment of a Solar Sail into earth orbit. The quicker story is that our club (WA4NZD) was started in the early-1970s, and operated Special Events commemmorating Apollo flights to the moon, Skylab missions, and early shuttle launches. Activity kinda dropped off in the mid-1990s, and the club is only now coming back to life. We still have VHF and UHF transcievers and beam antennas on a tower, that are ready to operate - and sometimes we listen in on ISS school contacts, or bounce APRS beacons thru the ARISS digipeater.

We of course got excited back in December when FastSat launched, and the NASA scientists asked if we could help them by listening for the NanoSail when it ejected. Unfortunately, Murphy had snuck on-board, and somehow prevented the smaller satellite from completely ejecting, and it looked like a loss....

Then in January the FastSat telemetry indicated that NanoSail-D may have 'popped itself out', and the Principal Investigator Dean Alhorn found Stan and asked if we could take him to the station "NOW" to listen for it. Sure enough, we had the right equipment, ready to go, and he got to hear it for the first time. We even had the AX25 TNC hooked up and it decoded a telemetry burst which allowed them to better estimate when the SolarSail should deploy. Dean was very very excited, and we all enjoyed a bit of the spotlight as Dean made obvious reference in numerous press releases to the role of the MSFC Amateur Radio Club in helping get the word out. The power of 'crowd-sourced' science became obvious as they received reports from all around the world. We are lucky to have been ready, willing and able to decode that early telemetry - it sure will help to validate and justify the existence of our little club station at NASA. You can easily find more on the internet, searching for NANOSAIL and WA4NZD.

Again we appreciate the publicity from your Podcast, and look forward to tuning in more often, and possibly sending you more info for your show. Thanks /;^) Alan Sieg - WB5RMG (http://wb5rmg.wordpress.com) Stan Sims - N4PMF MSFC ARC - WA4NZD (http://wa4nzd.wordpress.com)

Mark Twain, Tesla, and Edison

For Christmas my wife gave me Mark Twain's recently released autobiography. This put me on the path to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" which I'm reading on the train these days. I was pleased to find out that Mark Twain was very interested in science and technology. He liked to note that he was born during an appearance of Haley's comet, and that he would die when the comet returned (he did!) Wikipedia notes that there was a lot of tech talk in Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (one of my favorite books from high school days). Twain was close to Nikola Tesla. The wonderful picture (above) shows him in Tesla's lab. He was filmed by Thomas Edison (YouTube version below).

Getting Rid of Solder Smoke

I mean the smoke itself, not the podcast!

Frank, VK2AKG sent me this link to a good article about, solder, smoke and a simple homebrew way of keeping the fumes out of our lungs. (Steve "Snort Rosin" Smith take note!)

http://www.garypalamara.com/Articles_Solder_Smoke.htm

Our New Microphone!

Just kidding... That's actually a mic from an old Heathkit Benton Harbor Lunchbox.

I continue to get good advice from listeners on the mic issue. I hope to put this to rest soon -- then we'll shift away from AF back to RF. Several listeners advised me to stick to SolderSmoke's "homebrew or roadkill" ethos, and to avoid the temptation to solve problems with credit cards. Good advice! People REALLY like the audio with the old decrepit computer mic and the Linux Ubuntu Laptop. So here is what I'm going to do: I'll go back to that combo, but I will attempt to fix up some of the mechanical problems (the old mic is falling apart and it has all kinds of weird things taped on to it) and the electrical problems (it seems to pick up more AC hum than then D-104). It won't be pretty, but it will be a nice homebrew/roadkill device.

A question for those who expressed support for this mic and for the audio in #129: Didn't you hear the AC hum?

Audio Blues

OK, so the SolderSmoke community wasn't exactly Astatic about my use of the D-104. I was really kind of disappointed. After all, I'd risked my dental health (duct tape on my teeth!) in an effort to improve the audio quality. I found it especially galling that a new demon was added to my audio woes: AM broadcast band interference. QRM on the internet! I suppose it is somewhat fitting, especially for a podcast that occasionally dabbles in crystal radios.

Thanks for all the comments. Even for the bruising ones. They gave me some additional insights. Most of the problem is clearly at my end of the fiber optic cable. But I think part of this problem has to do with the fact that people are listening to the show with a wide variety of equipment: some are using car sound systems, some are at home using computer speakers (fed by all kinds of different sound cards). A very wide variety of headphones and earbuds are in use. Also, there are big differences in our ears! I, like many listeners, have some serious high frequency hearing loss.

But never fear, SolderFans! The quest for the perfect podcast audio continues. I have turned one corner of the radio shack into a roadkill sound studio. I have worked on several new (and several old) microphones. I have visited (and have actually read) several websites about podcast audio quality.

There may be a "name that mic" contest in our future...

SolderSmoke Podcast #130

SolderSmoke Podcast #130 is available at
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke130.mp3

Some important trivia questions (answers will be given in the podcast):

-- What is the connection between radio amateur (and pioneer radio astronomer) Grote Reber and world famous astronomer Edwin Hubble?

-- In the world of radio-controlled helicopters, what is "TBE"?

-- In Britain they have radio "rallies," but at one time they had hamfests." When did this happen?

-- Only one terrain feature on Venus is named for a man. He is man of radio. Who is he?

-- What music did Neil Armstrong listen to on his way to the moon?

Plus:
-- The Air and Space Museums
-- Our music
-- The SolderSmoke D-104
-- NASA asks for our help
-- Telescope repairs
-- A BFO for the Trans-O
-- Back on Echolink
MAILBAG!

Please send reports on the D-104 audio!

HT-37 on AM

I was very pleased to find AM activity up around 7290 last Saturday.
And I was even more pleased to find that my old
Hallicrafters transmitter can do AM.
The panel switch says DSB, but it is really putting out AM in that position.
If Verizon restores our internet connection I will send out podcast
#130 tonight.

40!

In search of early morning contacts I converted my 20m dipole into a
40m inverted V.
Wow! 40 is wonderful! I'm running into lots of fellow boatanchor fans,
and am also talking to Italian and Spanish radio amateurs.
Internet should be fixed on Friday.

Great News! Internet outage!

Last week's snow storm knocked out internet service here.
It may be out for a week.
This motivated me to get back on the air.
I fired up my OLD HT37 and Drake 2B combo and have been
Having a ball on 20 SSB.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining.
No hay mal que por bien no venga!
Podcast 130 is done (via D104) and
Will be uploaded as soon as they
fix the fiber optic cable.
I'm sending this via Blackberry.

Tech Details on SolderSmoke's Theme Music

This will be discussed in the next podcast, so I thought I'd share some tech details on our theme music. From the artist, Maestro Moj:

Geeky details about the music:
In the homebrew spirit, I tried to make all the sounds with instruments which I had soldered together myself. These were a Formant music synthesizer designed by C. Chapman from the Dutch/British "Elektor" magazine, circa 1977, and a FatMan synthesizer kit from PAiA Electronics. I play them through an ancient Kustom 200 guitar amplifier, which I've caused to smoke at least twice. The beginning is my K2 being powered on and tuned across 80 meters. I cheated and used a real gong at the end which a good friend went to the trouble of finding and buying in China, but I fed the sound through a PIC Polywhatsit designed by John Becker and described in Britain's "Everyday Practical Electronics," December 2001.
If anyone wants to sing along, it seems to me that the words are: " - Sol-Der Smo-Oke, - Sol-Der Smoke (repeat over and over) "
Music, like all home-brew, is never truly done. Next time I'll try to get a theremin working again - there's a radio-circuitried musical instrument!
If my grandson has kept the site up, there may be garage band music of his and mine on MySpace under Mikeandtheceiling.

Enjoy!

Mark "moj" Johnson
W8MOJ