DSES Technical and Operations Meeting Minutes- October 8, 2018

DSES Technical and Operations Meeting Minutes- October 8, 2018 by Bill Miller, DSES Vice President and Acting Secretary.

[Please click to read the PDF file.]

News & Announcement Board

Upcoming Activities

The next scheduled work trip to the 60-foot antenna site in Haswell is on Saturday July 20, 2019. Please contact us for more information.

The next DSES Science Meeting will be on Monday July 22, 2019, 5:30 PM at the home of Dr. Richard Russel, Please contact us if you would like information to attend.

DSES is planning its next annual Open House at the Plishner antenna site in Haswell for the weekend of August 9 through 11, 2019. This will be a similar event as we had during the past few years, with food, demonstrations of our equipment, talks, and socializing. More details to be announced soon.
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Work trips to the Haswell antenna site are now scheduled for each third Saturday of the month, with weather alternates on Sunday. This third weekend was chosen because it comes between our engineering and science meetings. Having a regular date helps our members plan ahead, especially those who must travel long distances.

Our engineering meetings are held on the second Monday of each month. Members can participate remotely using Teamviewer. Our science meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month. Start time is 5:30 PM. Please contact us if you would like information to attend.

News

The Technical & Operations Planning Meeting Minutes are now online. By DSES Secretary Floyd Glick.

Work trip report at the Plishner Antenna Site for June 14-15, 2019 is posted. By Bill Miller and Bob Haggart.

These are the results of our 2019 DSES Elections: our three open Board Member seats were voted on by the eligible general voting membership in May. Our three incumbent Board Members were re-elected: Dave Molter, Floyd Glick, and Bill Miller. The club officers in turn are elected from the seven Board Members, by the Board Members. At our annual meeting on June 10 the Board elected Bill Miller as President, Gary Agranat as Vice President, Floyd Glick as Secretary, and Myron Babcock as Treasurer. Thank you everyone who participated in the elections. And congratulations to this year's officers. Minutes from the Annual Meeting are now available by DSES Secretary Floyd Glick.

The slides from our DSES May 2019 Science Meeting are now posted. Dr. Rich Russel, our DSES Science Lead, taught us about pulsars, as we are now starting to try pulsar observing with the 60 foot antenna. And Dr. Russel presented his innovative concept for doing interstellar galactic navigation using pulsars.

Website Update Notes

Our current DSES Information Brochure (in pdf) is now online.

Active Experiments

Current experiments now in progress at the Plishner Radio Astronomy & Space Science Center site in Haswell:

60-foot dish antenna:
[August 19, 2018] The 60 foot dish antenna is now periodically being used for joint observing runs for SETI with Skip Crilly at the Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia. These joint observations are discussed in Skip's presentation slides from the 2018 SARA Western Conference at Stanford. See the slides on our Publications Page, in the Science Section.

With the pointing systems and receivers now being validated, we also are starting to use the 60-foot dish antenna for detecting astronomical radio source objects and the Milky Way at 1.4 GHz. We currently are using a SpectraCyber 1420 MHz Hydrogen Line Spectrometer. And we are starting to try RASDR4 (Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio). A 1.4 GHz feed designed by Steve Plock is at the focus.

Jupiter Radio Science Experiment "Radio Jove":
20.1 MHz monitoring of Jupiter and its moon Io, using a 2-element phased dipole antenna - currently down, pending repair of the receiver. [Aug. 18. 2018]

Experiments in Colorado Springs:

430 MHz drift scan

Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Monitor (SID):
- 25 kHz VLF Solar flare monitoring

More information about our currently running experiments