Welcome to the DSES Annual All Members Meeting 2021-04-19
Meeting Notes: by Bill Miller
We had 15 participants in the virtual All Members meeting today: We had some problems with a number of the internet connections and am sorry if you tried to join and couldn’t get in or got dropped. Thanks everyone for joining.
Participants: Myron Babcock, Dr. Richard Russel, Gary Agranat, Dan Layne, Bob Haggart, Ted Cline, Bob Sayers, Ray Uberecken, Don Latham, Dan Layne, Edward Currie, Dayton Jones, Jerry , Jim White WDOE, Bill Miller.
See the Zoom Meeting Video at:
Start Time : April 19th 6:00 PM
Agenda and notes.
- Check In
- Myron’s Treasures report: Ck 2469.79 Sav 5742.33 Dues for 3 renewing members outstanding. Website DSES.Science, will auto renew. UPS mailbox is $135/year. Power is nominal $60-$85. Phone and Internet cost $106.50.
- Membership Dues are now due for 2021. Please submit check or pay pal payment to Myron or on the link in the website.
- BOD Election.
a. We elected new board members to the three open seats for this year. Those are Floyd Glick, Don Latham, and Ray Uberecken. Bill Miller and Dave Molter are retired from the board.
b. Other Board Members not turned over this time are Bob Sayers, Bob Haggart, Gary Agranat, and Myron Babcock.
c. Officers will be selected by the new current board. - DSES Aug. Open House: Plan for on-site open house in August but will watch the CDC for guidance on the Corona Virus guidelines and try to decide in June.
- Accomplishments
a. Pulsars
b. Moon Bounce 50 contacts in Oct. and Nov.
c. Full control and Celestial and Moon tracking. Look up, Point and Track Sky Map, Raster Scan.
d. H1 mapping, Ray and Rich are doing H1 full time on 9 ft dishes. Ted Cline has the data analysis underway to do imaging. Will do some tutorials for SARA website. Full Sky survey data is available.
e. H1 small Scope in and box is available. SARA cost $290 on web.
f. 1296MHz Tropospheric Scatter couple a hundred miles.
g. Skip Crilly’s 1420 SETI observations - The 2020 Virtual DSES Open House Presentation
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zxpzj879iz7mt77/2020%20DSES%20Virtual%20Open%20House.mp4?dl=0a. Bill gave the presentation to the Front Range 6 Meter Group https://groups.io/g/FrontRange6Meter last month, recorded and posted it to our site.
b. Everett Curry, W6ABM Assistant Section Manager/Oregon ARRL, asked to present the recorded presentation to the General Interest Amateur Radio Club in North East Oregon Thursday, Feb 18th
c. The Artic Armature Radio Group of which Myron is a member asked for a live presentation of the Open House on Friday, March 12th.
d. The Utah DX Amateur group would like the presentation on Wednesday March 17th. - Rich’s projects and presentations:
a. Has been invited to HAMsci on March 19-20th to develop an interactive poster on the eclipse detection. https://hamsci.org/hamsci2021
b. https://www.eucara.nl/
https://www.camras.nl/blog/2021/eucara-2021-webconferentie-oproep/
The EUCARA presentation is about deciphering the pulsar map on the Pioneer Spacecraft
c. Sara Western conference April 3.
d. Call from Jason Outreach who is a documentary film maker that would like to do a film on radio astronomy.
e. Editor for the SARA journal.
f. 9 Ft dish in Rich’s yard generated a H1 full sky survey over the last year for H1 mapping. - Science fair prizes and Judging. (Bill Miller, Gary Agranat, Tony Bigbee)
- Ham Radio K0PRT contests and contacts. Triband Beam.
- Photographers on site.
- The 1296MHz feed is now changed out to the 408MHz feed for continuing pulsar work.
a. Need to learn how to use the B210 receiver. Rich has it set up as best as possible. Would like to have a faster computer to handle the throughput.
b. Need more dwell time.
c. Need a 10MHz reference source for B210. - See the Feed Change Schedule on the main website page. This may need updating.
a. 4GHz feed for aiming.
b. 1420Mhz is on the table
c. 1296 for Moon Bounce distance observations and moon orbit calculation. - Need internet for SuperSID and Radio Jove, Magnetometer, Security System, Power monitors, etc.
a. Phil Gage developed a Geo Pointing SW that points to GeoSync satellites for mount calibration. The scan pattern will hunt the field and log the output of the receiver and make a
correction offset. - Jon Ayers – Can you send a dual frequency beacon that can be used for range finding on the
moon. Like a frequency phase comparison range finder. - Bob Haggart has the Radio Jove Dipoles ready to put up back. Ray wants to us his Flex 1500 in the 54MHz band and have it on. See the NASA and Stanford Radio Jove webpage.
- Don Latham has purchased a data crunching computer for the data for the H1 and Pulsar data. This should increase the pulsar capability substantially. The machine has latest Ubuntu OS.
- Ray has developed a Pulsar Simulator that helps us to debug the pulsar data acquisition and post processing.
- Dan Layne using Gaussian fit to analyze the pulsar data. SARA has data on Skynet on Greenbank 20 meter dish and the data. Should look at that data from Greenbank. We should learn and make use of the data sets from our national radio observatories to go deeper. Note that EdX Radio Astronomy course starts March 14 https://www.edx.org/course/radio-sky-1 if you are interested.
- Plans for coming year:
a. Plan on a lot of 1420 work. And do Pulsars and 15Deg from straight up drift scan.
b. Raster Scan capability will give us RA, Dec 3D signal strength imaging.
c. Additional 3.8 meter dish for continuous drift scan at any elevation angle and remoted for members to use.
d. Scope in and Box for students
e. Outreach opportunities with SARA, ECARA, HAMsci, Student Events. These items get us more donations, equipment, and members to do more interesting work. - Maintenance and Infrastructure Items on Site
a. Check clean out and fix the Sump Pumps in the underground before spring rains flood the bunker. (Bill talked to Dave Molter and he said they had never been completely mucked out as far as he knew.) (Bill also discussed how the sumps work with Ed Corn.) need to muck them out before spring rains. Don suggested that we get a septic tank cleaner company to come out and pump out the sumps. He would even pay for it.
b. Last fall Steve Plock and Ed Corn noticed that the bunker was flooded. Bill checked it in December, and it was dry, but the floor was covered in silt and bugs. Need to sweep or vacuum up the dirt and bugs to make it operational. Clean the silt out of the Underground from the flooding damage. Need a pass through vacuum with a long exit hose.
c. Gary and Bill worked on the Beam Antenna on Saturday, April 10th . The tip down hinge mechanism at the base broke. Bill and Gary let Ed Corn and Steve Plock know about this and they will rework it when they make a site trip in May for Skip Crilly’s SETI project. In the meantime, don’t tip the tower down. Bill called Ed and he said that this had happened before, and he has a plan to weld on additional angle iron supports.
d. Take down the Beam on the tip over tower and align the 3 elements on the Yagi and reinforce the element attachment on the beam with cross bolts to keep the elements from rotating on the beam.
e. While working the tower issue we discovered that the HyGain Antenna rotor is not breaking properly and probably needs the gear replaced or the whole rotor replaced and aligned. Myron said he might have access to another rotor.
f. 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. g. Repair the dish bottom edge damage.
h. Clean out the tower and the pedestal base. Too much junk and clutter are accumulating there.
i. Clean out the junk under and around the Comm. Trailer and scrap it.
j. Align Ray’s HughesNet Satellite internet dish. Call HughesNet for reprogramming and support. Find internet provider alternative. Couldn’t get DISH out to reset the microbeam position. Bill asked the group if someone would donate a hot spot modem for a period of time and DSES will reimburse the plan cost. Now Ed MaCauley may sponsor the internet. See notes above.
k. Need to remove Tumble weeds have piled up in the ramp. Does anyone have a small yard waste chipper/shredder we could try? Bob Sayers has one at his cabin site that he will lend. We can try it out as a way of quickly dispensing the tumble weeds.
l. Continue to look for more, higher (8 Ft) chain link fence to mitigate the tumble weeds in the ramp. Bill checking on Craig’s List and FB marketplace.
m. 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. Bill did this last Saturday and got two 16 oz cups of metal and nails from the road.
n. The Ham Radio Equipment in the bunker needs some dust covers or enclosures to keep the dust out of the equipment. Need dimensions of the equipment to sew tarps or by plastic covers online.
o. Myron secured a Dantron MLA2500 2KW Amp and Yaesu FT736 donations for the site or sale.
p. Need a program to combine logs for position and time and signal strength from the dish instrumentation.
q. Need to modify the Trailer 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. Bob has this done and only needs to reinstall it. Complete: Bob finished it.
r. Replace the rear window of the Comm. Trailer. Complete: Bill bought custom window from Kent Glass for $81 and installed it.
s. Ray has 8 brackets to fix a railing around the scaffold for additional safety. Needs some help to install.
t. 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. Ray gave Rich a 10MHz ref source to implement. Rich will need to make an internal modification to convert the 10MHz clock to external.
u. Retrieve Key for Battery Box from Ed Corn. Bill called Ed and he doesn’t have it. We can replace the lock. Myron will purchase to more Combination locks.
v. Clean up the DC Bus on the Comm./Operations trailer wall. w. 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? Ray has a measurement method to find the exact focal point of the dish to phase center the feeds.
x. Ground the feed to the pedestal ground for lightning and static build up mitigation.
y. Grounding bulkhead of the trailer. Discussion about lightning mitigation of the site.
z. Fix old website to link to new one. Call Wayne Green and see who owns it or if he can fix
it.
aa. Facebook page link to new website.
bb. KRCC has a 3.8 Comtech industrial dish that we can get. Dish is good to 12GHz. Need to get a work party to remove and reinstall. Ray and Rich had discussed setting this up as a second dish that could be a training and remoting dish at the site.
cc. Feeds: Steve’s 1420Feeds for SETI work. Ray will remove the mount for Steve and then when he’s done will put up his 1420 feed for a period and then the 1296 feed again. - Miscellaneous discussion on various topics, see the Zoom recording.
a. Gary suggested analogy from his museum docent work experience, “When we had visitors at the museum, I would pay attention to what caught their interests and imaginations, and I would try to engage and build from those interests. That enabled them to genuinely feel ownership, and to continue to pursue what interested them, together with all the new things they were learning. And there was natural mutual respect. We can engage our members, especially our new members in a similar way too.” Gary invited our new members to share what was interesting them:
i. Dan is interested in collecting multiple measurements of the same pulsars
and do some additional data analysis to capture their differences over time.
ii. Jim White is interesting in SETI and EME. He comes from the original
Boulder/Longmont group. Also interested in the new radio mode Q65 for
tropospheric scatter work on 6 meters for very long distance low power and
low data rate comm. We could effectively do frequencies above 432MHz.
Also, Ionospheric sounding work reflecting from Ionosphere to determine
the strength of the reflection and the timing of the layer change. May need
to post RF Power limit signs at the site.
iii. Don mentioned WSPR in which you transmit an autonomous coded
message and gives signal report to the website from multiple locations.
Only uses 100MWatt XMTR.
iv. Rich, Solar radiometer receiver, from Rodney Howe, measures solar flux
units to measure the number of sunspots. We could be the US site for this.
Runs on a Python program.
v. Goal from this year is to do calibrated measurements. Need to do real
absolute value measurements. We need to calibrate our equipment for
pointing and signal strength. Don gave us a lock in amplifier that takes data
from the Dicke switch to get an absolute measurement.
vi. Ray wants to build a broad band downconverter at the feed to reduce the
coax loss of the 200 Ft. feedline. At higher frequencies we will need this. IF
frequency could be in the 200-300MHz range.
vii. Dual polarization at the feed would improve sensitivity and capture.
viii. University outreach programs for Educational opportunities and funding.ix. Ray’s feed has dual polarizations on the feeds s we could run dual lines to the receiver and improve the sensitivity.
x. FRB capture and research.
xi. How could we respond to Astronomical events like a supernova? If we had
a plan, we might be able to capture some data.
xii. Papers for the science meetings. Need some astronomy presentations.
b. This weekend Saturday the 24th Ray is planning a work trip. We still need to coordinate the trips as work trips and observation trips.
c. Rich will coordinate the Feed schedule and Observation schedule.
d. Bill will continue to help coordinate the work trip schedule.
End of Meeting. See you next week at the science meeting