Site Engineering

Upcoming Activities

The next site work trip to the DSES antenna site is scheduled for Saturday October 19, 2019. Members can meet at the Ellicott Firehouse at 7:30 AM to carpool if they wish. Plans include completing the erection of the 50 foot ham radio tower, with installation of its HF antenna.

DSES will participate in the Haswell Bazaar on Saturday October 26, 2019. The bazaar is an annual local community fair. Bill and Gary plan to be there by the start at 8 AM. Work at the antenna site may be done on that date also by other members.

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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 Minutes for the September 2019 Technical & Operations Meeting is now posted. Written by Bill Miller.

Dr. Richard Russel DSES Science Lead, reports on his Hydrogen Drift Scan using the new 9-foot Dish at his home in Colorado Springs. These are his first successful results using equipment at his home. He shows his first mapping of HI hydrogen in the Milky Way galactic plane, at 1420 MHz.

Work Site Trip Report, at the Haswell Plishner Radio Telescope Site, September 28, 2019 is posted.

First Light of DSES 9-Foot Dish Antenna at Rich Russel’s Home by Dr. Rich Russel. [Added September 5, 2019]

Plishner Work Trip Report – August 24, 2019

The System 1 Team installed a new version (V.4) of the System 1 tracking software at the Plishner antenna site on August 17, 2019. Glenn Davis wrote a trip report of the team's accomplishments and the status of the system. [Added August 21, 2019]

We hosted our 4th Annual DSES Open House at our Plishner Radio Telescope Site on the weekend of August 10-11, 2019. Thank you to everyone who attended. And thank you to our members who volunteered and worked hard to make our event a success. We’ll post more information and photos soon.

Skip Crilly presented an update to his paper, "Radio Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence SETI is fun ! Geographically-spaced Synchronized Signal Detection System", at the August 2019 Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers conference in Greenbank, West Virginia. Please see our Publications Page.

Website Update Notes

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

Paul Berge provided us with a design study for our 60-foot dish antenna, "LARGE ANTENNA SYSTEMS FOR PROPAGATION STUDIES By Ira Kamen, Vice President General Bronze Corporation, Valley Stream, New York. " Lauren Libby provided us with another historical paper "NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS REPORT 1826 Preliminary Report on Propagation Measurements From 92 – 1046 Mc at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, by G. R. Chambers, J. W. Herbstreit, and K. A. Norton.". This report includes a propagation study out to the Haswell site as well as other National Bureau of Standards sites out to Arkansas.
These papers are now placed under Historical Documents, on our DSES Publications Page.

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