{"id":7380,"date":"2011-09-22T08:51:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T22:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/22\/getting-ready-to-listen-for-sputniks\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T22:49:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T12:49:15","slug":"getting-ready-to-listen-for-sputniks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/22\/getting-ready-to-listen-for-sputniks\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Ready to Listen for Sputniks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>October 4 is approaching and I DO NOT have a homebrew Sputnik transmitter in the works. I hang my head in shame. AA1TJ sent me the parts, but they went to one of my many APO or FPO addresses, so I suspect they are orbiting around the Azores, or London, or Lisbon, or Rome. I’m sure they will reach me eventually. <\/span><\/p>\n

But I have come up with a way to participate in this historic event even without a homebrew replica transmitter: I will be listening for the Sputnik transmitters, and I will be doing so with a receiver of that era, a receiver that could have been used by some earnest teenager eagerly tuning for the beeps of the overhead RED MENACE. Like the intrepid young man in the picture. What a great shot! Wow, that’s Roy Welch W0SL, then W5SLL! When I got into satellites in the Dominican Republic in 1994, the first tracking program that we used was Orbits II… by Roy Welch. We loved that software. From the AMSAT page<\/a>: <\/span><\/span>“Roy and his two-year-old daughter would put the radio speaker in a window and then go outside and listen to the strong signals while they watched the third stage booster tumbling end over end like a bright pulsating star as it passed over in the evening sky.<\/span>“

I will be using a Hammarlund. Moore’s “Communication Receivers” says my<\/span><\/span> HQ-100<\/span><\/span> was made between 1956 and 1960. PERFECT! (Mine was probably in the Dominican Republic on October 4, 1957.)<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, I got into the old Electric Radio magazines again, reading some more of Lew McCoy’s wonderful reminiscences. He reports that during the Sputnik period he — and apparently others — were asked by their Uncle Sam to use their skills to monitor Soviet space activities. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let the beeping<\/a> begin! (Sputnik signals recorded by Roy Welch:
http:\/\/www.amsat.org\/amsat\/features\/sounds\/Sputnk1b-144.ra<\/a>)
<\/span>
<\/span>Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a>Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a>Our Book Store: http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 4 is approaching and I DO NOT have a homebrew Sputnik transmitter in the works. I hang my head in shame. AA1TJ sent me the parts, but they went to one of my many APO or FPO addresses, so I suspect they are orbiting around the Azores, or London, or Lisbon, or Rome. I’m … Continue reading “Getting Ready to Listen for Sputniks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,262,31,96,82,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hammarlund","category-mccoy-lew","category-radio-history","category-russia","category-satellites","category-space-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7382,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380\/revisions\/7382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}