SolderSmoke Daily News — Ham Radio Blog
Serving the worldwide community of radio-electronic homebrewers. Providing blog support to the SolderSmoke podcast: http://soldersmoke.com
This is about 2 years old, but somehow I missed it. It is really beautiful, and it helps keep things in perspective.
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
December 3, 2011
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke139.mp3
Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Billy’s Birthday (on the range!)
Astro-Knack: CCD camera in the telescope. Solar astronomy.
Winter approaches: Shack heating by Heath, Halli, Hammarlund and Drake.
2B troubles on 17 meters.
Rig Re-Cycling: Rebuilding 17 meter rigs from the last solar cycle.
Azores DSB re-build: Oscillator troubles then adding a JBOT.
Manhattan style construction and the need for urban renewal.
Book Review: Steve Jobs. (Woz has the Knack!)
MAILBAG
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless
Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Over the weekend I took a break from JBOT amplifiers and did something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time: solar astronomy. I pulled out my old 4.5 inch Tasco reflector telescope and aimed it at old sol. I know, I know, this can be dangerous, but we were careful — note that Billy is standing on the other side of the business end of the telescope. In his hands is the paper onto which we projected the solar image. I’d always wondered how I would get the sun into the telescope’s field of view without risking my eyesight by using the finder scope. This turned out to be no trouble at all: I just looked at the shadow cast by the tube of the telescope and –using the shadow as my guide — moved the tube until it was lined up with the sun. We snapped a picture of our results. I think our crude effort compared very favorably with the picture from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. You can see the same sunspots in each image (ours is reversed because we were using a reflector). These images are from 12 November 2011.
Our picture
NASA’s pictureOur book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time. It is a neat little project that allows for a quick and satisfying mixture of electronics and astronomy. It has been described on the web many times: Take an old web cam (preferably one of the old eyeball-looking devices) and remove the lens (I found it very cool to expose the charge coupled device).
Take a plastic 35 mm film container (hurry, while supplies last!) and chop off the bottom. Tape the container to the sans-lens webcam. Here’s the fun part: Insert 35 mm container and webcam into the focuser of your telescope. Bring laptop out to the telescope and take digital pictures with your telescope.
I used Billy’s old Asus eeepc and a very simple program called Cheese. (There has got to be something better for this kind of work.) But my results were very good. Last night I got images of Jupter and two of its moons. This morning I got some great shots of our moon.
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
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?
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
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?
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
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.
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Jupiter is high in the early morning sky now, and the weather is starting to cool off a bit here. Here is the configuration of the Galilean moons that I saw on September 11. This is from the Sky&Telescope on-line Jovian moon display.
I’ve even been able to do some “sidewalk astronomy” in the style of guru John Dobson: I have the telescope set up on my driveway, and I offer the pre-dawn dog walkers a look at Jupiter and Galileo’s moons. They are always very pleased. It is a nice way to start the day!
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
I’m reading Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot.” I found this beautiful video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
On this site you start out with a 360 degree image of the Earth’s night sky. You move around using the mouse and you can zoom in and out. (I’ve zoomed in a bit on Orion in the image above.) Then the fun begins: You can look at the sky in different frequency ranges — from radio to gamma ray. Very nice: http://www.chromoscope.net/
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
“Stars” by M.C. Escher
I read this on the train this morning and immediately wanted to share it with my fellow radio amateurs:
“And what if we receive a message? Is there any reason to think that the transmitting beings — evolved over billions of years of geological time in an environment vastly different from our own — would be sufficiently similar to us for the message to be understood? I think the answer must be yes. A civilization transmitting radio messages must at least know about radio. The frequency, time constant, and bandpass of the message are common to transmitting and receiving civilizations. The situation may be a little like that of amateur or ham radio operators. Except for occasional emergencies, their conversations seem almost exclusively concerned with the mechanics of their instruments: it is the one aspect of their lives they are certain to have in common.”
From “The Dragons of Eden” by Carl Sagan.
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http://soldersmoke.com/book.htmOur coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmokeOur Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
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http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke135.mp3
June 26, 2011
Bike riding, composting… what next?
Lightning kills the WSPR rig
New finder for old telescope
——SPECIAL FOUR DAYS IN MAY INTERVIEWS BY BOB CRANE W8SX:FEATURING:
Joe Taylor K1JT (Nobel Prize Winner — FOR PHYSICS!)! Plumbing Defined Radio! Steve WG0AT: Fly Fishing, Retirement, Goats, YouTube, and Amateur Radio!
George Dobbs, G3RJV! And more! —– Drake 2-B updates: WARC and 160 Dial Templates,
Drake 2B Serial Number Math Estimate Project (Using German tank method) Michael AA1TJ’s Sputnik 1 Project
Putting the Shack back into RadioShack
Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter viewed from the ATCA on 16th May, 2011.
Wow, this video is really beautiful. The astronomers out there are setting the bar quite high — this is the second really spectacular production of this kind that we’ve seen in the last week. Reminds me of one of my favorite movies: The Dish
The guys who run Slashdot are not known to be very sentimental, but they warned that this video may bring viewers to tears. They were right. This one is really magnificent. Makes me want to ditch the diplo gig and move to the Atacama desert. Sit back, put this on full screen mode, turn up the speakers a bit, and prepare to be amazed.
Wes, W7ZOI, passed this to me. This is a really inspirational project, with a very beautiful result. I recommend you read this newspaper article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015040399_nightsky12.html
Then go play with the images here:
http://skysurvey.org/
These are real images from the Huygens probe. And the sound is apparently from the radio signals generated by Saturn. I agree — it sounds nicer than Jupiter!
The good folks over at spaceweather.com have once again alerted us to an important astronomical event: During May, early risers will be treated to a conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. (The fifth visible planet would be the one you are standing on!) The Moon is thrown in as a bonus. The photo above was taken by Liz Gleeson on Magnetic Island (Australia) — what a great location!
Here is a really well-done video on the new EU radio telescope. Very interesting. They are listening as low as 10 MHz. (I hope my little QRSS shark fins don’t cause any ET confusion!) The antenna elements pictured looked a lot like the devices that Paul, NA5N, has been working on out at the Very Large Array. One thing I didn’t quite get in the video: the shot of Arecibo.
Anyway, check out the video. You will like it.
http://www.motherboard.tv/2011/2/22/listening-to-the-universe-the-largest-telescope-on-earth–2
“I love to revel in philosophical matters – especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all the facts and figures and I have all the knowledge there is concerning them. I yelp astronomy like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like Ursa Major.
~ Mark Twain
OK, so he hung out with Tesla and Edison. Now this… Could Mark Twain have had a pre-radio case of The Knack?
SolderSmoke Podcast #130 is available at 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!
