Site Engineering

Upcoming Activities

Voting is now in progress for the election of three DSES Board Members for 2021. Board Members serve for a 2-year term. If you are a voting member, you should have received an email with the ballot and instructions. On the ballot this year are: Ray Uberecken, Don Latham, Floyd Glick, and Bill Miller. Ballots must be received by DSES by March 9, 2021. Board Members who will continue serving from last year are Gary Agranat, Myron Babcock, Bob Haggart, and Bob Sayers. Once the new Board Members are elected, the Board will then elect DSES executive officers of President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.

Please send your Membership dues for 2021. Annual dues are $50 for voting members, and $20 for non-voting members.

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At this time we are holding our monthly meetings as virtual meetings. Our engineering meetings are normally held on the second Monday of each month. Our science meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month. Start time is 5:30 PM. Email notifications are sent to members prior to the meetings. If you would like information to participate, please contact us at information(at)dses.science.

Work trips to the Haswell antenna site are generally 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. During the Covid-19 pandemic, work and science trips may be coordinated for other times. NOTE: Please coordinate with us before you go to the Plishner site, information(at)dses.science.

News

DSES Science Meeting for February 22, 2021 Minutes, Slides, and Video are now posted.

Rich Russel wrote an article for the current issue of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers: Using a MAX 2870/71 Signal Source Generator as a Pulsar Simulator, by Richard A. Russel. Radio Astronomy January-February 2021, pp. 51-54. You can read the article in PDF. The article is posted on our Publications Page.

The minutes and video from our DSES Engineering and Operations Meeting is now posted. Minutes by Bill Miller.

DSES President Bill Miller gave an online presentation about DSES to the Front Range 6 Meter Group on February 10, 2021. The video of the presentation is now online [please click the link]. This video is done as an Open House presentation of our organization.

Our notes and video of our DSES Science Meeting of January 25, 2021 are now posted. The meeting was led by Rich Russel and Bill Miller.

The Meeting Notes of the January 2021 DSES Engineering and Ops Meeting are now posted

We have Rich Russel's paper posted and available, Converting a G5500 AZ/EL Rotator to an RA/DEC Tracking System. which will be in the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA) 2021 Western Regional Conference.

Plishner Site Work Trip Report, December 8, 2020 by Bill Miller.

We had a successful weekend operating Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) Moon Bounce communications again for the ARRL EME contest, on November 27-29, 2020. We had to do some troubleshooting, which prevented us from operating for the first Moon pass, over the first night. Be we operated for the second Moon pass. We had 19 contacts: to Europe, Canada, the U.S., Japan, and Australia, on CW and JT65. Read about it on our post: DSES Succeeds in our 2nd EME Moonbounce Communications Competition.

[Updated Nov 30, 2020] The notes, slides and video from our DSES Science Meeting, November 23, 2020 are now online.

Website Update Notes

We added two educational resource links on the Education Page: an Astronomy Open Textbook, and a beginner's course/tutorial about Near-Earth Space by Dr. John Eddy, originally produced by NASA.

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

60-foot dish antenna:

Current main work with the 60-foot antenna is to develop our ability to detect pulsars. We are doing this at several wavelength bands. During the winter, work will continue with observing galactic hydrogen at 1420 MHz.

We are regularly using the 60 foot dish antenna for joint observing runs for SETI with Skip Crilly at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. These joint observations are discussed in several of Skip's presentation slides. Please see our presentations page.

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.

Experiments in Colorado Springs:

Drift scan survey of Milky Way of HI 1420 MHz spectral line.

Development of hardware/software and techniques for detecting pulsars.

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