Tag: Membership meetings

DSES Annual All Members Meeting April 19, 2021

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:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/J7cMjwB6K6kZxTGYgt-hgCsdyMZqfI7JhcnDIUl2lzH-5LIUClRx6k4ROLy3OcCU.KBMMsM1_5IxRvn0W?startTime=1618876857000

Start Time : April 19th 6:00 PM
Agenda and notes.

  1. Check In
  2. 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.
  3. Membership Dues are now due for 2021. Please submit check or pay pal payment to Myron or on the link in the website.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Science fair prizes and Judging. (Bill Miller, Gary Agranat, Tony Bigbee)
  10. Ham Radio K0PRT contests and contacts. Triband Beam.
  11. Photographers on site.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. Ray has developed a Pulsar Simulator that helps us to debug the pulsar data acquisition and post processing.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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

DSES Science Meeting, August 24, 2020

These are the slides from our online Science meeting, on August 24, 2020. The meeting was hosted by our DSES Science Lead, Rich Russel,

http://dses.science/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSES-Science-Meeting-8-24-20.pdf

You can watch the video of our meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/x_1UIpbw2DNLQ8_q4xvyY4MhD4f1T6a81igfrqAPmk86FwFaBdR2MHJzIJSeeaTR?startTime=1598312047000

May 11, 2020 DSES Engineering and Operations Meeting Notes

by Bill Miller 5/11/2020

We had 17 participants in the virtual engineering meeting today:  Most ever! Thanks everyone for joining.

Participants: Dr. Rich Russel, Ray Uberecken, Myron Babcock, Ted Cline, Bob Sayers, Jonathan Ayers, Xander Duvall, Tony Bigbee, Ed Corn, Gary Agranat, Skip Crilly Don Latham, Glenn Davis, Floyd Glick, Matt Mathews, Bob Haggart, Bill Miller

Agenda and notes:

  1. Check in. How is everyone doing with the stay at home/safer at home situation.  Is anyone experienced or known someone experiencing the virus? Anything we can do for them?
    • We have had one core member contract and recover from the virus that we know of.
    • We cancelled in person meetings in March and went to virtual meetings to protect members.
  2. Myron’s Treasure’s update:
    • Checking $2440.40 
    • Savings $5741.85
    • Upcoming Insurance $290 to $310 
    • Board to approve reimburse to Steve for New Mexico mileage to set up the Ettus pulsar receiver with Joe Martin.
    • Membership
      1. 30 Voting members including 5 lifers  and 12 nonvoting. Myron checking with others as yet unpaid.
  3. Pulsar detection congratulations to Team and further work from Rich Russel
    • On the attempt on Feb 15th,  the gains were set too high and saturating the Ettus Research SDR receiver. Need to tune this front end gain into proper range for the input of the SDR.
    • Last Week on May 2, B0329 +54 pulsar got it on the fourth try for a ½ hour run with manual tracking.
    • This week on May 9 , got the B0329 +54 pulsar on 420Mhz+/-5 Mhz. which is the  second brightest pulsar and tried three others and didn’t see them.  All the others were low in the horizon. Joe Martin took 12 hours to get one of them at his site but the DSES team didn’t get any of the others yet.
    • Would like to be able to do the Crab Nebula Pulsar.
  4. Additional engineering needed for pulsar work.
    • Automatic tracking
    • Intermittent a/b switches on the encoders is causing a problem. Rich wants to take them out. Bill says they are not inherently intermittent but dirty.  Ray said that exercising them solved the immediate problem but if taking them out will improve the process, Bill’s OKAY with that.
    • Pulsar software used is Presto. Scott Ransom in Charlottesville is author and Skip can connect you if having issues or feedback.
    • Tony sites “Murmur SW is a predictive program to help set up for Pulsar observation.
    • Ray added 20dB amp in the comm trailer.  Steve has a preamp with better noise figure that can be added at the feed.
    • Each pulsar will take a minimum of about an hour of collection time.
    • Steve and Paul Berge need to reset the electric azimuth drive stops so that the system will track the circumpolar pulsars continuously without wrapping back around. Currently can only go 15 degrees past north and need to be set up for 90 degrees from north.
    • Tropospheric observations need a different stop.
    • Ray says the pulsars observed lately are circumpolar, near the north star so need to be able to go to the 90 degree mark on either side.  Paul Berge could do the adjustment on the limit switches.
    • Manual tracking  is boring and automatic tracking would be better. 
  5. Ray: Feed work and change out capability
    • Ray has another 1420 MHz feed that we would like to try
    • Steve located his electronics box in the same spot where Ray was planning for his box so need to reconcile this positioning with Steve.
    • Ray has a 1296 MHz feed available to do moon bounce and tropospheric scatter work.
    • Ray has installed rotating swivel joints in the coax.
    • The coaxes pull up through the center when moving the elevation to the horizon.  Currently the coax swivels are only a few feet below the tube and one broke when moving the elevation to 90 degrees so Ray will mitigate that with some extra flexible coax.
    • Skip asks about the bandwidth of the 1420 MHz feed.  Skip used 1390 – 1460 Mhz and this is the same specification  of the preamp that Ray used.
  6. SETI project with Skip. 
    • Skip will not be able to go to Greenbank with travel restrictions but will be able to do observation from his New Hampshire observatory. 
    • Skip’s dish is running 24/7 with 6 computers. Doing a lot of post processing of the data he is collecting.
    • Skip says there is no real urgency for simultaneous observations because of this and not to risk anything for his sake at this time.
  7. Tracking System 1 update;
    • System 1. Lewis Putman completed the HW design and will connect with Jones plug in the back of the rack. 
    • The control SW is updated, and Glenn will do some testing and give it to Lewis.
    • Glenn will set up a design review with Lewis, Dave, Bill and Ray to discuss the electrical interface plans.
  8. Summer site work?
    • Bunker bunk room.
    • AC up to feed point needs conduit
    • Water heater in the
    • Two 30 Amp 240 volt outlets in generator shed.
    • Top door for the doghouse. Need steel 32 inch door.
  9. Ham radio
    • Looks good
    • Need some cross bolts in the Yagi beam.
    • Addition antennas?
  10. Eastern SARA August Conference, August 2-5, 2020 Green Bank Observatory WV.
  11. Open House? 
    • Need to wait till late June for a decision on announcement due to uncertainty of the virus situation.
    • Gary and Bill will check for best calendar dates considering the Moon, other events and Ham activities.

Open Floor

  1. Bob Haggart, 
    • The back door of the trailer opened up a little crack and allowed the dirt to blow in.
    • Sealed up the AC units and other openings but must clean out the dirt.
    • The back air conditioner needs replacing. Bill has one he will donate.
    • The Heater was removed to make room for the back workbench
    • Bob working on the battery room as a storage room.  The tower inverter power is running off the railroad batteries in the comm. trailer so Bill doesn’t see any reason to replace the old wet cell batteries in the battery shack and we should recycle them.
  2. Gary Agranat
    • Gary has an upcoming MIT class reunion that has been moved to a virtual reunion. 
    • He has been asked by the class committee to make a class presentation on the Plishner Observatory and what we are doing in a Ted talk format.
    • This will be a great networking and familiarization opportunity with the 1985 MIT class.

Bill recorded the meeting on Zoom. It is in two parts, due to a gap in Internet coverage:

  1. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1ms0ngdjrrsehhk/AABn9w_NLjV8hEoB9VRas37_a/2020-05-11%20DSES%20Eng%20Meeting%20Zoom%20Part%201.mp4?dl=0
  2. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1ms0ngdjrrsehhk/AADRvLawoJnZl4RlvW90N6Ora/2020-05-11%20DSES%20Eng%20Meeting%20Zoom%20Part%202.mp4?dl=0

DSES September 2019 Engineering and Operations Meeting Minutes

Minutes by Bill Miller

Attendance: Ed Corn, Gary Agranat, Myron Babcock, Phil Gage, Rich Russel, Bob Haggard, Dave Molter, Lewis Putnam, Jonathan Ares. Online via TeamViewer: Tony Bigbee.

Next work Trip in 21st of Sept.  Gary and Ed may also use the 28th for to work on the tower.

  • Pointing System 1 HW/SW status and completeness: Phil Gage, Dave Molter,  Johnathan Ares
    • 3 weeks ago. Fixed the bad bit by jumpering to another channel and changed the SW to match.  Tested and Ed verified last weekend.
    • Dish mount stiction and inertia make continuous control too erratic so need to do a step and drift control.
    • The team took data on the command voltage verses speed and found both axes to be pretty linear.  See the graph.
    • Glenn added a computer supported manual control that tells the operator what commands to give the system to track manually. A little labor intensive but works.
    • With elevation axes is now stable and we should do a calibration using astronomical objects.
    • Should also mark the feed horn mountings to reduce the RF pointing error when changing or reinstalling the feed antenna.
    • Make a table of offsets for each feed and do a calibration for each feed.
    • Bill gave system 1 team the control relay circuitry used in System 2.
  • Pointing System 2 HW/SW status and completeness:  Bill Miller
    • The PID control system that Ed Johnson implemented in the SW has been tested and can drive the dish mount to within one or two bits on the encoders.
    • The system worked fairly well on the last test in July except that the system would hang up and continue to drive the mount when it should have stopped.  This sometimes caused an overshoot or required manual shut down. 
    • Bill is building a physical simulator to make it easier to trouble shoot the system 2 without the Plishner Dish.  In this way Ed can work on the SW at home and work out these last bugs.
    • It would be nice to have a second spare encoder to work this but the lowest cost one found on eBay was over $500.
  • Synchro pointing system status and completeness:  Bill Miller
    • The Azimuth Synchro system worked when installed last year.  Bill installed the Elevation Synchro in the early June Trip but when testing there was a problem in the system with a fault to ground.  This is 120VAC supply current flowing where it shouldn’t and must be fixed to be safe. 
    • Several of the old terminal boxes were used in the hookup.  Bill suspects that one of those is causing the leakage.  We will have to trace down and correct this before the synchro can be used as a backup pointing system. 
    • Members are asked not to plug the synchro panel into AC power until this is resolved.
  • Dish Feed system status and changes
    • There was apparently a lightning strike on the dish this summer that took out the feed electronics and the power supply in the trailer.
    • Steve worked on the feed and found a bad amplifier. Steve rebuilt the amplifier pack and still found another bad amplifier.  Skip sent Steve a set of amplifiers that he will install on the next trip.
    • Steve has the noise source to test the RF through the amplifier chain.
    • The power supply was also bad, and Skip shipped a new one that works.
  • Preparation for Stratospheric and Moon Bounce (EME) radio operation.
    • Ray and Steve terminated the hardline on the 3rd deck and will attach to extensions down to the tower base. One hard line is complete.
    • Need to be careful to get the feed mounted exactly as we had it.
    • Hope to be able to do Stratospheric long distance communication and Moon bounce (or EME) in the autumn or near future.
  • Status of Hydrogen Detector at Rich’s House
    • Rich has taken 4 declinations in a daily drift scan and is generating a composite color image of the HI emission.
    • Ray added a second LNA in the system that works much better than the first.
    • Drift scan HI is working well and anyone in the core group can get the data from Rich’s computer.  Send him an email.
  • Pulsar Detector Status
    • Have the Cavity filter and Low Noise Amplifier for pulsar has just been received and we have the SDR made for this calibrated and ready to go from Steve and Joe Martin in New Mexico.
    • Will try for the strongest Pulsars with the long Yagi in Rich’s back yard.
    • A dish with tracking or a Yagi array would be better.
  • SETI observation plans and schedule
    • Steve has a time crunch to fix the feed, power supply and amplifiers and make it work by the end of  September for a 3 day run.
  • Plans to do Tropospheric Radio Communication
    • Want to do Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Wyoming
  • Plans for Moon Bounce Radio Communication
    • Tentatively considering upcoming ARRL contest weekends. Two weekends in October 19th and 20th and November 16th and 17th.
  • Ham Radio Station and Antenna Status
    • Ed and Gary built the 50-foot tower and are ready to mount the tribander beam antenna for 10, 15 and 20 Meters on the rotor.
    • Will also mount a 2 meter antenna on the side of the tower for the talk in radio.
    • Ed reworked the buckled pipe section of the vertical antenna with some clamps and bradding to make a splint to repair.
    • Gary rechecked the vertical antenna SWR with an antenna analyzer. He reports antenna is working as well or better. He posted a table of SWR values for each band behind the station operating desk.
    • Repaired the broken radios.
    • Gary operated three QSO parties: for Hawaii, Ohio, and Kansas, and made CW and SSB contacts on all three.
    • In the open house we had a special event station and had a number of members get on the air.
    • When using the Ham radio Equipment make sure to unplug the Antennas from the radios when you leave.
    • The tower is a tip down design.  The winch will tip down the tower to be able to lower the antenna and work on the antenna.
  • Infrastructure items
    • Ed has the Electrical system built out.  A couple of stubs for add ons are all that is left.
    • Construction
      • Need a 32-inch steel clad pre-hung door for the top of the spiral staircase.
      • Need cement board to skirt the trailer.  Dave may have some.
      • Installed the mid hallway door and it needs the blocking panel at the top
      • In the future would like to slit the tool room into two compartments.
    • Plumbing
      • After he amateur tower is finished Ed will install the hot water heater.
      • Will also install a European type shower.
      • Ed wants to have a dump station with a grinder pump and pump out the sewer line.
      • Ed uses a deveining rod method to locate the pipes and wires.
      • He says the sewer line runs to the SE corner of the lot were there is a square vault and then a pipe leaves that and goes across the road.
  • Outreach
    • Open House.  Bill owes the group a report.
      • Need the Attendance list from Myron which was let in the Comm. Trailer
      • Need any additional photos that you took. Paul Berge may have more.
      • October Haswell Bazar.  This will be in late October. Bill and Gary plan to support a table.
  • Myron’s Treasures Report
    • 2067.75 Checking
    • 5740.11 savings
    • At Monument Mega Fest made $356 selling surplus equipment.
    • United way Philadelphia $30
    • Collected $260 in dues and a $50 donation, $88 in food donations for the open house
    • Expense for electric account is $128 for July and will be between $70 and $125 monthly.
    • Telephone is $38.25/month for only 911 and the local exchange
    • 55 members 35 voting 25 not voting
    • 18 have not renewed
    • $90 charge for Eads newspaper ads for open house
  • General Discussion
    • May approach Dalton Eichenberg on spraying or getting a brush hog on the site.
    • CHIMES program in Canada. Canadian Hydrogen Mapping Long term project. They need infrastructure, power and fiber. 150 by 150 ft. footprint.
    • The block wall has made a big difference in the mud flow.
      The bulker hasn’t had a lot of water since the pump was replaced. 
      Batteries in the battery box in the battery room are dead and Ed will hook in the RR batteries for the Inverter power.

DSES Technical and Operations Meeting Minutes, 7-09-2018

DSES Technical and Operations Meeting Minutes, 7-09-2018

Minutes written by: Bill Miller, DSES VP and Acting Secretary

Location:  IHop/IHob, Constitution Street, Colorado Springs

Attendance:  Gary Agranat, Myron Babcock, Ed Corn, Glenn Davis, Floyd Glick, Dave Molter, Steve Plock, Bob Sayers, Bill Miller

Attending Remotely via TeamViewer:  Dayton Jones, Skip Macaulay, Jamie Riggs

Next Trips to site: 

  • July 21st site work trip.
  • Site work trip on an additional weekend before open house.
  • Open house trip for the group on Friday, August 10th thru Sunday August 12th with the public event on Saturday, August 11th.

 

Accuracy:  As always if I have misstated, omitted or misrepresented anyone please feel free to correct me.

Agenda:

  1. If Quorum present board vote on tower section disposition.
  2. Completion of outhouse project.
    1. Wiring
    2. Operation Briefing
    3. Toilet
  3. Closing of Synchro Cable Conduit trench
  4. Installation of RV electrical pedestals.
  5. Additional open house preparations.
  6. Tentative menu for Saturday in bunker.
  7. Questions and Comments

 

Meeting Minutes:

  • Steve and Ed only made $40 from the Ham Radio Mega Fest in Monument after Steve spent about $50 in diesel to haul the equipment back from the site. However, this did get most of the junk out of the bunker.  We still have a lot of site junk and surplus material to clean up.
  • Dave got a lot of the wood that was taken down last year cleaned up around the ramp.
  • We have an additional metal scrap pile in bunker needs to be cleaned out. Bill will help clean out and dispose of material.
  • Myron Treasures Report
    • Got $100 dues and donation from Skip at Centennial electronics
    • Got $50 dues from Don Lewis
    • $1383.22 in checking
    • $5731.02 in savings

Agenda Items;

  1. If we have a quorum at the meeting, present board to vote on tower section disposition. We have all board members present in this meeting except for Dr. Richard Russel.
    1. There are 9 – 10ft sections of ROHM 45 in Ray Uberecken’s yard that he would like to get removed.
    2. We have a Rohm 25 base above the bunker and we have 2 sections of on site and 2 more sections at Ray’s house, so we can still erect a 40-foot Rohm 25 tower at the bunker.
    3. Michael Lowe would like to have 5 sections of the ROHM 45 for the Pueblo Makers Space. A motion was made and seconded for the Board vote on giving the non-profit the excess ROHM tower sections that we don’t need.
    4. The board voted to give 5 sections of the ROHM 45 to Michael’s makers space project in Pueblo. Bill later let Michael know of this decision and Michael will arrange to pick up the tower sections from Ray’s property.

 

  1. Completion of outhouse project.
    1. Wiring: Ed has material to hookup power to the outhouse.
    2. Operation Briefing: Will have a rail road exhaust fan and a red light for occupancy indicator. Will brief the group on maintenance and operation of the facility.
    3. The second narrow door of the small building will have a pin on the inside to allow emergency exit should the main door become jammed or blocked.
    4. Toilet: Ed and Steve now have the chemical toilet and the service pipe installed.

 

  1. Closing of the synchro cable conduit trench: We need volunteers next trip of Saturday, 7/21 to cover the trench in before the open house. Most who will be at the work day said they would help.

 

  1. Installation of RV pedestals.
    1. Will setup best locations from last year’s open house RV parking.
    2. The RV hookups are for 20 Amp, 120V, and no ground fault. The connection will run from the outhouse electrical connection. They are not suitable for RV air conditioning loads.  The DSES will ask for a $10/night donation for RV plug in usage.
    3. Wiring: Will need to purchase additional materials for the RV electrical hookups. Ed, Steve and Myron will go to Colorado Electrical Supply this week to purchase the remaining material to install the RV Electrical pedestals.
    4. We will need to trench in the additional wires for the RV electrical permanently before winter.

 

  1. Additional open house preparations.
    1. Clean up garbage and scrap.
    2. Clean up under the comm. trailer.
    3. General cleanup and marking of hazards.

 

  1. Tentative menu for Saturday the 11th. Lunch and Dinner menu.
    1. Dave will bring the grill.
    2. Bill will bring the coffee mess with camp stove and another 10X10 canopy.
    3. Myron has been buying all the food in the past and he has had a donation pot but paying for the remainder out-of-pocket. The Board voted to cover food expense not covered by donations out of our bank account, so Myron is not stuck with the bill.
    4. Will have hotdogs on the grill for Saturday lunch for public.
    5. Steve will bring “Modified Brunswick Stew” for the dinner on Saturday night.

 

  1. Presentation for Saturday in bunker:
    1. Rich will provide the presentation agenda for the weekend.
    2. Gary will have a ham radio presentation and demo.
    3. Others may also present solar, and optical astronomy and other radio astronomy topics such as eddy bitty telescope.

 

  1. The pointing controls:
    1. System 1:
      1. Dave, Glenn and Bill are working to add analog power supply, motor control electronics and modified software program with tracking for system 1.
      2. Dave is reworking System 1 box at home and will reinstall on July 21st.
    2. System 2:
      1. Bill is working to complete software port and details for system 2 and will reinstall.
      2. Will add the Lenovo laptop for this.
    3. Dave and Bill will add 3 switch boxes to the DB 25 connections to the encoders and tracking output to make the systems selectable.
    4. Synchros: We have the azimuth synchro indicators working for azimuth position but still need to hook up the elevation synchros. Need a new access plate and Liquid-tight flexible conduit to route the wires from the Elevation encoder/synchro enclosure.

 

  1. Questions and Comments
    1. The GPS time base used in Skip Crilly’s SETI observations is a TN4 model from Spectrum Instruments. It has been sent back to Skip for repair or replacement before the next observation session in August.
    2. Need an announcement for the open house on August 11th in Eads, Sugar City, and Haswell businesses and in the Kiowa county newspaper. Need a one or two paragraph announcement for the open house.
    3. Ed had installed the telephone intercom and the talk in radio at the site on 146.46MHz simplex. Bill and Dave tested this on the last trip and had good audio and range as Bill drove out, almost out to Arlington on a hand held with rubber duck and good audio and copy. Great job on this to Ed!  We may increase the height of the antenna when the tower is erected for even more range.
    4. Gary placed the announcement for the Open House on our DSES website. And he placed an announcement in the August QST and on the ARRL website about the ham radio special event station to be operated during the Open House.

 

  • The meeting was adjourned, and Dave, Glenn and Bill spent an additional half hour after discussing the system 1. controller motor drive electronics design.

 

Submitted 7/16/2018:  Bill Miller, DSES VP and Acting Secretary

 

 

 

DSES All Members Meeting April 14, 2018

This is the slide presentation for our All Members Annual Meeting on April 14, 2018. This was presented by Dr. Richard Russel, our out-going president.

DSES All Members Meeting 2018

The content includes:

  • The results of the Executive Board election
  • The Treasurer’s Report
  • Club accomplishments of the past year (of which there are many)
  • List of current projects
  • Science and published paper highlights
  • Outreach and communications
  • New Officer nominations / elections / appointments *

The Annual Meeting was held at the La Casa Fiesta Restaurant in Monument, CO.

The next official meeting is an open Executive Board Meeting on Friday evening, May 4, 2018 at 5:30 pm. The location is the IHOP just east of Powers Blvd. on Constitution Ave. in Colorado Springs. The General Membership is welcome to attend. Unfinished business and plans for the upcoming year will be discussed.  (*) Also the elections will be recertified at the meeting.