Welcome to the February 2021 DSES Engineering and Ops Meeting
2021-2-08 DSES Engineering and Ops Meeting Notes: by Bill Miller
We had 16 participants in the virtual engineering meeting today: Thanks everyone for joining.
Participants: Myron Babcock, Glenn Davis, Jerry Espada, Dr. Richard Russel, Gary Agranat, Dan Layne, Bob Haggart, Floyd Glick, Phillip Gage, Ted Cline, Jonathon Ayers, Bob Sayers, Phil Coker, Ray Uberecken, Don Latham, Bill Miller
See the Zoom Meeting Video at: Topic: DSES Engineering and Ops Meeting
Start Time : Feb 8, 2021 05:30 PM
Meeting Recording:
See the Zoom Meeting Chat at: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/sdownload/kY_gXTy5O0ogjIsRjH1elZFw2rkc9NmfVNxPEiXiyebkYrni7ugAMBTq_f8CjMxkzNNE1fx6Ek3LezqY.e46qIxQNO41we6rh (This will send a text file to your Download Folder.)
Agenda and notes;
- Check In
- Membership Dues are now due for 2021. Please submit check or pay pal payment to Myron or on the link in the website. We started 2020 with 62 members and ended with 52 members. Several members that we normally see at the open house and renew dues then did not do so this year because we did not hold the open house. Myron has tried to contact them but have not heard anything back yet.
- Latest Treasures Report from Myron Babcock. The current checking is $2579.20 Savings Is: $5742.29, Jan 978.25 income and $471.73 expenses. Bob Haggart was reimbursed $360.25, Electric bill $83.77.
- If you order on Amazon use the Smile option for Deep Space Exploration Society and we get a rebate. Gary will post a procedure form Myron on how to do this. Update: the URL for the Amazon Smiles link is now at the bottom of the DSES homepage after the PayPal link. Use the URL: https://smile.amazon.com/. The site will then guide you. Select “The Deep Space Exploration Society” as the non-profit organization/charity.
- Discussion on Phishing EMAIL. Getting a lot of 1 liner emails. Don’t open the attachments!
- Photographer, Marc Slover, Road Trip Ventures visited the site with Dan Lane, Ray Uberecken and Rich Russel on Jan 23 and took some more time lapse videos while the dish was chasing and tracking pulsars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=HLrpsVmBchE&feature=youtu.be
- Marc’s Videos from Previous trip
- BOD Election. Need to Nominate 3 BOD members.
- We elected 4 BOD positions in 2020. Myron Babcock – Treasurer and Gary Agranat – Vice President were retained. Steve Plock – At large, and Dr. Richard Russel-At large were replaced by Bob Haggart and Bob Sayers.
- We will elect or retain 3 seats turning over in 2021. These are Dave Molter at Large, Floyd Glick- Secretary, Bill Miller – President,
- So far, we have these nominations.
- We have received only one nomination for BOD by Email for Ray Uberecken from Myron. Bill Seconded that nomination,
- Floyd Glick self-nominated in this meeting and Bill seconded.
- Ray nominated Don Latham and Bill seconded.
- That is Three but to have a little competition we would like to have more and will hold nominations open for a few more days.
- In keeping with the Bylaws schedule changes voted by the board in 2019 the rough schedule is as follows, To hold nominations open we will need to modify these dates by the delay.
- Open nominations now, January 15th, and close in 20 days, on February 4th.
- Release the ballot to the members by February 9th.
- Hold board election in the following 10 days, completing Feb 20th.
- The 4 BOD members not up for election shall count the ballots and make results known to the membership by Feb 26th.
- Schedule the “all-member annual meeting” in early March and in that meeting the Board votes for or assigns officers from the elected BOD. Although we would like to have an in person meeting, because of the Covid-19 and our responsibility to keep our members safe, the all-members meeting will be scheduled and held virtually.
- We need to finish and post the new bylaws changes related to the BOD election schedule that was approved last year to our website. Bill sent the Ver 3.1 Bylaws markup to Gary and Floyd for review, incorporation and posting.
- April 3rd is the SARA western conference with papers already submitted. Deadline for papers for the August conference is the first of June.
- The SARA Drake’s lounge is on Feb. 21st at Noon. SARA members should be automatically invited.
- Rich wrote a paper for the spring SARA conference. Check out Rich’s SARA paper on “An Arduino Controller for the Yaesu G5500D mount”.
- Rich is doing a MAX2870 RF signal generator paper for SARA and will post. The unit has a frequency range of 23.5MHz to 6GHz.
- Last Pulsar trip was not too successful. Had some issues of the tracking SW driving into the electrical limit switches. One failure was caused by a power glitch. The second failure was unplugging the Ethernet Switch and losing communication. Resetting the power, limit switches and manually driving the dish corrected the error but when moving the dish, you should always keep an eye on it with the CCTV monitor or out the window.
- To get beyond the 13 pulsars captured so far and find fainter ones, we will need greater dwell times and more bandwidth in the receiver.
- Bill to do a DSES Virtual Open House presentation to the Front Range 6 Meter Group on Wednesday Feb. 10th at 7PM. This was completed and the recording will be linked on the website. This picked up a couple of new members, Jim White who was part of the original Table Mountain DSES and Paul Sobon the president of the Front Range 6 Meter group.
- Late breaking news is that Everett Curry, W6ABM Assistant Section Manager/Oregon ARRL. Would like to present the presentation to the General Interest Amateur Radio Club in North East Oregon Thursday, Feb 18th.
- The 1296MHz feed is now changed out to the 408MHz feed for continuing pulsar work.
- Need to learn how to use the B210 receiver.
- Need more dwell time.
- Need a 10MHz reference source for B210.
- See the Feed change schedule on the main website page this needs updating.
- The HughesNet dish for internet service may be a dry hole. Ray and Rich had called the service tech to the site, but he showed up at Rays residence, so it didn’t get fixed. We need to look for other alternative Internet providers Myron has started to investigate this.
- Need internet for SuperSids and Radio Jove, Magnetometer, Security System, Power monitors, etc.
- Things to do
- Check clean out and fix the Sump Pumps in the underground before spring rains flood the bunker.
- Cut off the 5 band vertical mounting pole and move the vertical base to ground level and reattach and add more radials and bury them for protection.
- Repair the dish edge damage.
- Clean out the tower and the pedestal base.
Align Ray’s HughesNet Satellite internet dish. Call HughesNet for reprogramming and support.Find internet provider alternative.
- Need to remove Tumble weeds have piled up in the ramp.
- Continue to look for more, higher (8 Ft) chain link fence to mitigate.
- Clean the silt out of the Underground from the flooding damage.
- Nails on Road. Several of Ray’s friends came out on the 10/3 trip and used metal detectors and magnets to clear the site of nail and metal on the road. We’ve all had flat tires and need to continue to clear the road and site of debris as many of us have had tire damage. Bill bought a new magnet roller and left it in the Comm. Trailer. Please walk it up and down the road once whenever you’re on site.
- Align the 3 element Yagi and re-enforce.
- The Ham Radio Equipment in the bunker needs some dust covers or enclosures to keep the dust out of the equipment.
- Need a program to combine logs for position and time and signal strength.
- Need to modify the heater with sheet metal or plastic covers to provide safety and the bracket needs to be reinstalled. Need 4 2 ½ inch drywall screws to hold the heater bracket to the wall.
Replace the rear window of the Comm. Trailer.Complete: Bill bought custom window from Kent Glass for $81 and installed it.
- Ray has 8 brackets to fix a railing around the scaffold for additional safety.
- Ettus Research B210 receiver from Don Latham. Rich has it working except for the GPS input. Will work at the site with the GPS. Don says there is a 10MHz source in the electronics he brought down.
- Retrieve Key for Battery Box from Ed Corn.
- Clean up the DC Bus on the Comm. trailer wall.
- Find the perfect focal point and phase center of the dish. See: Ruze formula. Could we characterize the dish surface for problems and accuracy to determine the loss from damage and weathering. Or, could devise measurement and reference system so we always place the feed in the exact phase center?
- Ground the feed to the pedestal ground for lightning and static build up mitigation.
- Fix old website to link to new one.
- Facebook page link to new website.
- Miscellaneous discussion on various topics, see the Zoom recording.