RCA Proceedings - Spring 2019

Proceedings

SPRING 2019

SPECIAL APOLLO 11 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong in training for Apollo 11 mission.

Aldrin scoops up a soil sample, while Armstrong aims his camera.

Photo by NASA. 1

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SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

2019 BOARD LISTING PRESIDENT Carroll L. Hollingsworth* EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT John Facella, P.E.* VICE PRESIDENT Nathan "Chip" Cohen, Ph.D.* VICE PRESIDENT/CO-COUNSEL Chester "Barney" Scholl, Jr.* John Robert Stratton TREASURER Ronald J. Jakubowski* SECRETARY Margaret J. Lyons, PE, PMP* DIRECTORS David P. Bart* James “Ernie” Blair* James Breakall Karen J. Clark Michael Clarson Paul Z. Gilbert Charles Kirmuss Stephanie Mccall* Robert Naumann Ray Novak Carole J. Perry Elaine Walsh* William R. Waugaman Larry Weber PRESIDENTS EMERITI Steven L. Aldinger Gaetano “Tom” Amoscato Sandra Black John “Jack” Brennan Phillip M. Casciano Mercy S. Contreras Timothy Duffy Mal Gurian Bruce R. McIntyre Stan Reubenstein Anthony “Tony” Sabino, Jr. Raymond C. Trott, P.E. STAFF Amy Beckham, Executive Secretary Sue Sack, Financial Reporting Miki Tufto, Membership and Order Fulfillment COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSONS Awards & Fellows: Charles Kirmuss Banquet: Margaret Lyons Constitution & By-Laws: Chester “Barney” Scholl, Jr. Education and Youth Activities: Carole J. Perry Finance: Phil Casciano Fundraising Coordination: Nathan “Chip” Cohen, Ph.D. Historical/Museums & Archives: Paul Z. Gilbert Keeping RCA Vibrant: Margaret J. Lyons, PE, PMP Marketing & Endowment Policy: Elaine Walsh Membership: James “Ernie” Blair Nominations & Elections: Nathan “Chip” Cohen, Ph.D. Publications: David P. Bart Regional Conferences: Karen Clark Scholarship Fund: Richard P. Biby Sponsors: Jane Winter Technical Symposium: John A. Facella, PE, C.Eng. Website: John A. Facella, PE, C.Eng. *Executive Committee Member

THE PROCEEDINGS SPRING 2019 | Volume 90, Number 1

The Radio Club of America, Inc. Honoring the Past, Committed to the Future

HEADQUARTERS OFFICE: 13570 Grove Drive #302 Maple Grove MN 55311 | (612) 405-2012 amy@radioclubofamerica.org | www.radioclubofamerica.org

CONTENTS From Your President............................................................................................................ 4 From the Publications Chairman.......................................................................................... 5 Special Announcement: RCA Banquet to Feature John Miller............................................... 6 2018 Banquet & Technical Symposium – Reasons to Attend............................................... 8 RCA's 2018 Armstrong Medal Address................................................................................. 9 RCA's 2018 Technical Symposium And Banquet Were a Huge Success!..............................17 Invitation for Abstracts for 2019 Technical Symposium..................................................... 23 RCA’s 2018 Award Recipients............................................................................................ 25 Some Candids from the Reception and Banquet................................................................ 26 RCA's 2018 Lee De Forest Award Acceptance Address...................................................... .28 RCA's 2018 Fellows Address.............................................................................................. 30 2019 Fellows and Awards Nomination Forms..................................................................... 32 Florida Engineering Students: Life in Space and Ham Radio.............................................. 35 Solar Powered Amateur Radio Digipeater for Emergency Applications............................... 38 News Items........................................................................................................................ 43 The Book Shop................................................................................................................... 50 Book Review: The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science...........51 Special Anniversary Section: Apollo 11 50th Anniversary................................................... 54 Milestones In Space Exploration Leading to Apollo 11....................................................... 56 Upcoming Special Exhibits Relating to the Apollo 11 Anniversary...................................... 59 Communications on the Moon............................................................................................61 Communications to the Moon and Planets......................................................................... 65 Apollo Television.................................................................................................................73 Call for Papers / Editorials.... ..................................................................................................110 2019 Sponsorship Opportunities.......................................................................................111 Business Directory............................................................................................................112 RCA Calendar & Events....................................................................................................114 Opportunities to Support Radio Club of America...............................................................115

AEROGRAM EDITOR Elaine Walsh

PROCEEDINGS EDITOR Glenn Bischoff

TECHNICAL EDITOR John S. “Jack” Belrose, Ph.D., VE2CV 811-1081 Ambleside Dr. Ottawa, ON K2B 8C8, Canada (613) 721-7587; jsbelrose@gmail.com

ADVERTISING CONTACT Amy Beckham (612) 430-6995; Amy@radioclubofAmerica.org

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR David P. Bart 8512 Kedvale Ave. Skokie, IL 60076 (847) 542-9873; jbart1964@gmail.com

PRODUCTION Sapphyre Group PROCEEDINGS SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR Nathan “Chip” Cohen, Ph.D.

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FROM YOUR PRESIDENT I am honored to be the President of the Radio Club of America. I wish to share my vision for 2019. The Radio Club of America will grow in membership.

We will be more involved in wireless communications, amateur radio, broadcast, and new technologies.

We will work to change our programs to make them more productive, and to more greatly serve individuals and groups that we serve.

The 2019 Officers and Directors of the Radio Club of America encourage you, as an RCA member, to become a member of one of our committees. We value your experience, knowledge and perspective in assisting our efforts to grow and increase our presence to encourage today’s youth and young professionals to become an active member of the Radio Club of America.

In 2019, we will provide more opportunities to network with other members, and your professional peers. We know that networking is one of the reasons that you have chosen to be a member of RCA. We encourage you to be a part of one or more of our committees. We have many members who are very generous with their time and support for our

programs. The Officers and Directors of RCA will continue do whatever is necessary to sustain the success that we have had for 110 years. We have a tremendous start for 2019, we are coming off a terrific IWCE event, where we had 110 members join us for breakfast. It is always so wonderful to see everyone. This year we again partnered with IWCE to help sponsor the Young Professionals program, recognizing young wireless professionals and I’m pleased to say that we honored ten people that day.

We look forward to seeing many of you at Hamvention this month, and Ham-Com next month, and at our Technical Symposium and Banquet in November, and at many of the other events taking place throughout the year.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve as your President in 2019. I am most fortunate to be part of the team of outstanding Officers and Directors, each of whom is incredibly motivated and talented. I thank you as a member for your continued support for the Radio Club of America.

CARROLL HOLLINGSWORTH, President The Radio Club of America, Inc.

2019 RCA TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM The Technical Symposium this year will return to the Westin Hotel in New York City, on Saturday November 23rd (NOTE the change to a Saturday schedule, successfully implemented last year, will continue.)

Topics and speakers are still being organized. We are looking for presenters in any of the areas of wireless technology including antennas, broadband, broadcast, cellular, land mobile radio, military, satellite, or other wireless related technologies. RCA especially likes to feature 'early work' and offers an opportunity for researchers and companies to gain feedback on the technologies that they are developing. In 2019, we will be featuring a number of presentations or panels

about wireless applications in transportation, including developments involving railroads and automobiles.

Live streaming has been very well received, and we intend to live stream again in 2019, using the Facebook Live platform.

We are calling for abstracts from potential presenters; go to https://www.radioclubofamerica.org/wp-content/ uploads/2019/03/Call-for-Abstracts-Tech-Symposium2019-1.0.pdf. If you have particular suggestions or ideas, please email to info@radioclubofamerica.org.

Also, make your reservations early. The hotel block sells out quickly. Information is on the RCA Website: https:// www.radioclubofamerica.org/.

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Member, Senior Member, and Fellow bars ORDER AT: www.radioclubofamerica.org/about-us/rca-memorabilia Prices include shipping & handling.

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SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

FROM THE PUBLICATIONS CHAIRMAN The spring 2019 issue of the Proceedings offers a Special Section celebrating the Apollo 11 moon landings of 1969. It was a truly historic event; not just for its achievement, or the worldwide attention it received, but for the incredible accomplishment of broadcasting live television from the moon, approximately 240,000 miles distant. Those broadcasts allowed a global population to participate, for the first time, in the risk, the drama, and the history-making efforts of the endeavor. The back portion of this issue is dedicated to that event, and to all the people who made it possible.

Each spring, we recognize the banquet award recipients and new Fellows, and the very successful Technical Symposium from the previous fall.

We also include the most up-to-date information about early planning for the upcoming RCA Banquet and Awards Ceremony and the Technical Symposium, all of which will be return to New York City in November 2019.

We encourage all of you to join your fellow RCA members at this much anticipated, outstanding event this fall.

We remind our readers that the Proceedings reflects the commitment of our members. We need your contributions. We invite the entire membership, and outsiders, to share in the Proceedings by submitting your own articles and reprints. We seek a range of news, current technical information, historical content, and biographical material to share with our membership. The Proceedings has never been better, but we do need your help, so please contribute material for a future issue so that

RCA can continue to expand its premier publication.

It is spring, and this is RCA award application season. I encourage everyone to submit applications nominating 2019 award candidates and Fellows. The strength of the banquet depends on finding worthy recipients. The deadline is fast approaching in June.

Finally, congratulations to all of RCA’s members for their continuing successes. We welcome your comments, recommendations, and suggestions on ways to further improve the Proceedings.

We look forward to seeing all of you in New York City this November.

DAVID BART, KB9YPD Editorial Director and Chairman RCA Publications Committee

WELCOME YOUNG PROFESSIONALS Welcome new Young Professionals who became members of RCA at IWCE this year: Adam Geisler, Elizabeth Grossenbacher, Michael Caston, Anthony Ibrahim, Lauren Eastwood, Michael Perez, Victor Hernandez, James Miller, Guido Perez, and Jon Szeliga.

JOIN RCA AT HAMVENTION 2019 MAY17-19 Dayton Hamvention is just around the corner on May 17-19, and once again, RCA will be highly visible at the show.

We are looking forward to connecting with old friends and reaching out to new, potential members to share the value of belonging to RCA. We hope to see you at one or more of the following!

Stop by to say hello to your fellow RCA members at Booth 1811!

www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT RCA 2019 BANQUET TO FEATURE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, INTELLIGENCE & COUNTERTERRORISM JOHN J. MILLER Prior to service with the ODNI, Deputy Commissioner Miller served as Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), heading the Office of Public Affairs and serving as the FBI’s National Spokesman.

In addition, Deputy Commissioner Miller was the accountable executive for developing a compliance system to ensure that the FBI’s mission as a member of the US Intelligence Community was being carried out.

The result was the Strategy Performance Sessions (SPS) lead by Director Robert Mueller. The SPS, similar to the Compstat system used by major police agencies, has become an effective tool to measure the effectiveness of the FBI’s intelligence programs. It brings the Director face-to-face over a live, secure video connection with the leadership and intelligence teams of the Bureau’s 56 field offices.

Before joining the FBI, Deputy Commissioner Miller was the Commanding Officer, Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Prior to the LAPD, he served as the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner, Public Information.

John Miller

The Radio Club of America (RCA) is thrilled to announce that John Miller will be featured at the 2019 banquet and awards ceremony. Our members will not want to miss this incredible opportunity to learn about his current world views.

ABOUT JOHN MILLER John Miller was appointed Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism on Jan 8, 2014.

Deputy Commissioner Miller oversees both the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau which is responsible for intelligence collection and analysis as well as the NYPD's Counterterrorism Bureau operations, including the partnership in the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, the nation’s first and largest JTTF. Deputy Commissioner Miller is the former Deputy Director of the Intelligence Analysis Division at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

It is there he served as part of the Analysis Division team to support the National Intelligence Managers and the Unifying Intelligence Strategies relating to global regions and threats. The Analysis Division is also home to the team that produces the President’s Daily Brief (PDB).

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SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

Along with his service in law enforcement and intelligence, Deputy Commissioner Miller was a wellknown journalist and author. He began his career as a reporter, working in local and network news at NBC and ABC. He was co-anchor of the ABC News show 20/20 with Barbara Walters and is the winner of eleven Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards and two DuPont Awards.

As a journalist, he was best known for his interview with terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, coverage of international terrorism and the events of 9/11. Deputy Commissioner Miller is the co-author of the New York Times Best-Seller The Cell: Inside the 911 Plot. He has served as an instructor at the FBI National Executive Institute and for the Defense Intelligence Agency Advanced Counterterrorism Analysis Course.

He is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators.

RCA 2019 BANQUET RCA’s 2019 banquet will take place in New York City, Saturday, November 17 at the Westin New York Times Square. RCA thanks those individuals who invited Mr. Miller to join us at the 2019 banquet. We look forward to seeing everyone in November for this rare and very exciting opportunity.

Dayton Hamvention 2019

ENJOY THE REWARDS OF

MEMBERSHIP IN CELEBRATION OF

NEW MEMBERS 50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

1959 RCA GOLDEN JUBILEE

CELEBRATION RECORDING

Join the Club for 3-years at a special rate: $ 150 65 years or older for 3-years at this rate: $ 100

WAIVED INITIATION FEES / DEADLINE IS MAY 19

NEW & RENEWING MEMBERS

All new or renewing RCA members who complete a 3-year or Lifetime membership application on or before June 30, 2019 receive a special gift—a fully restored recording of RCA’s 50th year Golden Jubilee celebration in 1959. In this recording you can hear the voices of many wireless luminaries including: W.E.D. Stokes, the first RCA Chairman Captain H.J. Rounds, Armstrong Medal winner, 1952

Paul Godley, an RCA member who traveled to Scotland to receive transmissions from the U.S. in the famous 1921 Transatlantic Tests

Walter Knoop, RCA’s President, 1959 Major E.H. Armstrong, Inventor of frequency modulation and the super heterodyne receiver

lso included A on this rare recording is Morse code (CW) sent during the Jubilee event by RCA Vice President Harry Hough on a 1909 spark gap transmitter.

Receive this commemorative recording as a free download when you join or renew your 3-year or Lifetime membership. This historic recording, originally on two LP records distributed to attendees at the Golden Jubilee celebration, was given to RCA by the daughter of a former RCA member. The LP recordings were remastered to digital by RCA member and former Director, Lou Manno.

Radio Club of America, 13570 Grove Drive, #302, Maple Grove, MN 55311

www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS Follow us!

612.430.6995

www.radioclubofamerica.org

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Save the Date!

2019 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AND 110TH BANQUET & AWARDS PRESENTATION SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 | NEW YORK CITY Featuring Keynote Speaker John Miller, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism of the New York Police Department

REASONS TO ATTEND THE RCA BANQUET AND TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM 1

Cutting edge technical learning This year's Technical Symposium in New York City will have panels on wireless as used in transportation technology, 5G, and the details of the Apollo 11 TV broadcast from the moon in 1969!

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Strengthen your network The Radio Club of America is the oldest, most prestigious group of wireless professionals in the world.

Make the most of your membership by connecting with old friends and developing new contacts.

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Honor the distinguished and deserving Join us to celebrate the people who invent, create, inspire and collaborate to create the products, services and companies that make this industry one of a kind.

4

Support the next generation Help develop the future workforce by supporting RCA's youth efforts, and learn from this year's RCA Young Achiever Award Winner.

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Can you feel the energy?

RCA continues to build on the momentum from last year, recruiting new members and developing strategic partner-ships with other organizations. Be a part of the excitement and help us shape the organization as we continue our vibrancy long into the future.

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Discover New York City Join us in the Big Apple as we immerse ourselves in the energy of the city!

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Register for the 2019 Technical Symposium and Banquet at www.radioclubofamerica.org.

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

RCA'S 2018

ARMSTRONG MEDAL ADDRESS EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Theodore “Ted” Rappaport received RCA’s Edwin Armstrong Medal at the 109th Radio Club of America Banquet and Awards Ceremony on November 17, 2018. He was also the Keynote Speaker. The Armstrong Medal is presented to an individual who has made outstanding achievements and lasting contributions to the radio arts and sciences.

Dr. Rappaport received the medal for advancing communications in 5G and the utility of millimeter wavelengths. The following text presents Dr. Rappaport’s keynote address; portions have been edited for publication.

“My Life in Wireless”

By Dr. Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport President Duffy, Board Members, Honorees, club members, and guests, it is an honor to give the keynote address for this special night. President Duffy asked me to give an account of my life’s journey in wireless, and to speak about what the Radio Club of America (the RCA) has meant to me. It is a real thrill to be here tonight.

But, I was lucky to have the constant love and support of my grandparents. When I was five, Grandpa Carl showed me how to operate his antique Philco shortwave radio.

We tuned around for hours listening to Morse code and ship-to-shore. It was magic! As a kid, I could not wait to get back to Brooklyn and see my grandparents and to turn on that radio.

During my 5th and 6th grades in Richmond, Indiana, I met my life-long friend, Tom Poland. When my family abruptly moved from Indiana to New Hampshire after 6th grade, Tom and I kept in touch by mailing each other cassette tapes with rambling voice messages, since long distance telephone calls were too expensive. In the middle of 7th grade, my nomadic ways ended when we abruptly moved back to Indiana, into a condemned antique house in Cambridge City. Thankfully, radio was to become my passion and sanctuary from that point on.

I suffered a freak injury in a sandlot football game, just before 9th grade, and broke my leg in three places. I was hospitalized in traction for six weeks, and was then sent home to lay immobile on my back, in a full-body cast for six more months. This was seven and a half months of laying around - literally. Little did I know that this would become the best break of my life!

With all this free time, I listened to a short wave radio my grandmother bought me. I read voraciously about radio, antennas, and wireless. This experience surely helped me become a researcher. I made audio cassettes of the Morse code, and fell asleep to the tapes each night. I listened to short wave, and collected QSL cards from all of the global stations, including my favorite, HCJB: The Voice of the Andes.

Dr. Ted Rappaport (l) receives the Edwin Armstrong Medal presented

by Tim Duffy (r).

MY EARLY YEARS I was born to Jewish teenage parents in Brooklyn, New York. I am the oldest of four siblings, and I hardly new my youngest brother, Caleb, who was born after I went to college. It is not an understatement to say that my childhood was a lesson in survival. I lived in fourteen different cities across six different states by the time I was twelve years old. My father was an antique dealer, and he would routinely sell the furniture we used for daily living. Stability was not something I knew growing up.

HCJB had a special show for ham operators called DX Partyline. I learned how HCJB engineer Clarence Moore invented the cubical quad antenna in 1939. HCJB stood for “Heralding Christ Jesus Blessings,” and I heard the Gospel for the first time laying in my body cast. As my leg healed, I wrote a brief letter to 73 Magazine, telling them I was fourteen years old and seeking help to get my ham radio license – that letter was my first publication.

Mark Woodward, WB9NNO, became my amateur radio mentor, and helped me and my best friend Tom get our amateur radio licenses. Since Richmond to Cambridge City was a long distance call, Tom and I would get on the ham radio and talk in Morse code. We began teaching the code and radio theory classes for the Whitewater Valley Amateur Radio Club on Saturday mornings at Earlham college. We both received our extra class tickets when we were sixteen—I was N9NB, and he was N9NC. I am sure my love for teaching and colleges germinated www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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student housing. For our first anniversary, Brenda gave me headphones! For my 21st birthday, she conspired with Tom to get me Bencher Keyer paddles to send Morse code— I still use them today. Brenda and I have now been married for 37 years, and I am hoping for 37 more! We have been blessed with 3 wonderful children, and I am so pleased to introduce you to my family: My wife Brenda, my children Matt, Natalie and Jenny, and my best man Tom Poland. Our son Matt wanted to be here but could not make it.

RCA SCHOLARSHIP AND A PH.D.

Ted Rappaport giving the Keynote Address.

from these experiences.

For my 15th birthday, my mother gave me the living bible, and late one night, after reading the Book of Job in the old testament, I was overcome with a white light more brilliant than could ever be imagined, and experienced an incredible feeling of love. It was a power more intense than I have ever known. God visited me right there in my bed - He had come to save me- and I wept uncontrollably with joy. Since that moment, I’ve known there is a heaven and that God is real and relational. In that instant, my life-long fear of death vanished.

I mowed lawns, worked as a stock boy at a department store, and at McDonald’s, saving up to buy an old car and a better ham rig. In my last semester of high school, I was kicked out of the house, and lived with many of the local ham radio families. I was on my own.

COLLEGE I was lucky to receive an Indiana State Scholarship and hitchhiked to Purdue University, where my pal Tom, N9NC, had decided to attend, as well. At Purdue, Tom and I became active with W9YB, the college ham station. Two of my most important life lessons came in Freshman year: (1) always check your spelling, it matters, and (2) move on when you have given it your all, time is precious.

I had always been shy around women, and on October 24, 1979, on the same day I pledged an engineering fraternity to try and get dates, I met the love of my life at a dorm homecoming float party. From across the room, I saw my future wife Brenda, and it was love at first sight.

God visited me at that moment, with the same force and clarity as when I first read about Job, and told me I would marry that woman. Eighteen months later, at age twenty, Brenda and I were married. Since that fateful day, I never got less than an A throughout all of college, and much of my success and drive has been due to my passion for Brenda, and the inspiration she gives me.

I had a Drake C line radio in our bedroom in married 10

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

Money was tight, and we could not afford graduate school with so many college loans and a new baby to support. Then, out of the blue, Hugh Turnbull, a member of RCA, called me during senior year, to tell me that I had won the Richard Chichester Memorial Scholarship.

That $900 scholarship represented a fifth (20%) of our annual expenses. Then, a year later, Hugh, or maybe it was Eric Stoll or John Dettra, called to tell me I had won the $500 RCA scholarship! These two scholarships gave us the extra help I needed to pursue a Ph.D. at Purdue.

My Masters thesis was part of a new Purdue engineering center on intelligent manufacturing, and my work with Professor McGillem studied how mobile robots could navigate and communicate in factories — the first autonomous vehicle. This was before the internet, Wi-Fi, or cellular. My thesis created a navigational method that is used in factories today, and my Ph.D. helped create the first Wi-Fi standard. I was able to meet President Regan and show him my mobile robot, and that brief meeting at Purdue inspired me to become be a professor.

We had gone from an“idea” to generating results and big funding delivered personally by the President!

VIRGINIA TECH Wireless was not yet being taught in college, but it needed to be. In February 1988, we moved to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia where I started a wireless lab and wrote a course on wireless communications for students who went on to become the first generation of cellular engineers. In my first year as a professor, Raj Singh, the owner of a small consulting company called LCC, asked me to do a very special, short term, highenergy project for the cellular industry.

The country’s fledgling cellular industry needed a new 2nd generation (2G) standard that could improve capacity of the analog AMPS by a factor of 10. Raj put me on a blue ribbon panel with a mission to measure the east and west coast for radio propagation conditions.

He needed our panel to analyze the results and write a report by January 7, 1989 – in just a few weeks!

Fearlessly, my first graduate student, Scott Seidel, and I flew around the country, setting up equipment in different cell towers during Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and came home exhausted on January 3rd - giving us only 4 days to process the data and write the report. We had many IBM PCs running overnight in

Scott’s apartment to determine the channel statistics that the U.S. cellular industry would later use in the development of its first digital standards.

Our work led the CTIA to vote for TDMA (D-AMPS/ IS-54/ IS-136) for the 2nd generation U.S. cellular standard in January 1989, even while upstart Qualcomm could not garner industry support for CDMA in that vote, as it was new with many skeptics.

Apparently, our work caught the attention of others at that historic vote. Motorola Vice President Mort Stern called my home from the Washington Hilton during that CTIA meeting — the day Qualcomm first publicly announced its CDMA concept. He faxed me Qualcomm’s slides and hired me over-the-phone as a consultant to determine the capacity of CDMA. He wanted the analysis in a month. I wrote Pascal computer programs for nights on end, and came up with an analysis that showed CDMA offered 14X AMPS with half rate speech coding, and Motorola used this to support the idea of CDMA. Six months after that phone call, Motorola made a multimillion dollar investment in Qualcomm, two years before QCOMs IPO, and Motorola pushed the Telecom Industry Association to consider CDMA. I was probably one of the first people in the world, outside of QCOM, to know the amazing potential of CDMA. The Telecom Industry Association approved CDMA as a second US digital standard in May of 1989, and QCOM was born.

Nothing inspires students more than meeting and learning from the pioneers of new technologies, and the Wireless Industry needed newly minted graduates. I started a seminar series and invited industry leaders to our rural campus in the Spring of 1990 — this became an annual symposium that still runs today, 29 years later, at Virginia Tech.

RCA AND FAMOUS INSPIRATIONS Based on our rapid growth at Virginia Tech, I received the Marconi Young Scientist Award in 1990.

Gioia Marconi Braga’s father won the Nobel Prize for wireless, and made the first transatlantic transmission of wireless in 1901. The five teenagers from New York City who started the Radio Club of America in 1909 were inspired by Marconi. Notice that Gioia Marconi’s letters came from Brooklyn Polytech. Two of my dearest mentors, David Goodman and Henry Bertoni, who both came to my first wireless symposium in Blacksburg, worked together at Brooklyn Polytech. All of this worked together to draw me back to Brooklyn, my birthplace, when I joined Brooklyn Polytechnic in 2012, prior to the merger with NYU. The Marconi awards gala was so elegant, unlike anything Brenda and I had ever experienced – it was the first time I wore a tuxedo. There, I met Marconi’s oldest daughter, Gioia Marconi Braga, and Bob Lucky, the inventor of the equalizer, Len Kleinrock, the inventor of packet radio, and Qualcomm’s co-founder Andy Viterbi.

I was still under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)

and could not tell Dr. Viterbi or anyone else that I had analyzed CDMA and recommended it to Motorola, but I sure wanted to! Gioia and I became pen pals over the next several years until her death in 1996.

At the 1991 IEEE Vehicular Technology conference in St. Louis, I met the inventor of the walkie-talkie, Al Gross, and we became instant friends until his death a decade later.

Al was showcasing the walkie-talkies he built for WWII (The Joan – Eleanor project), and the wrist watch radio that Al showed Chester Gould (the author of the Dick Tracy comic strip). Al Gross is why Dick Tracy started to wear a wristwatch radio in 1946. I knew that Al could ignite the interest of an entire generation of engineers – he surely did me! He willed his inventions to Virginia Tech and they are on permanent display at Torgersen Hall. Al was a frequent visitor to Virginia Tech and to our home, and he told me about the Radio Club of America, and about pioneers Fred Link and Stu Meyer.

When I asked Al to bring his inventions to our wireless conference at Virginia Tech, he also brought Fred and Stu! Stu Meyer was a leader at Hammerlund radio, and was president of the Radio Club of America in the 1980s.

Fred Link pioneered two-way radio and was “wireless royalty,” a beloved president of the RCA for decades.

Stu, Fred and Al invited me to join the Radio Club of America and nominated me for Fellow at the young age of 30 – they nearly flipped when I told them Hugh Turnbull had called to give me the RCA scholarship at Purdue years earlier.

These inspirational leaders are responsible for our family’s wonderful tradition of returning every year, the weekend before Thanksgiving, to attend this RCA banquet. To this day, we remember Fred Link in RCA.

CELLSCOPE AND PAGETRACKER Now for some intrigue. In 1989, as I was launching my career as a professor, the U.S. Army visited my lab. In

Fred Link (l) presenting Ted Rappaport (r) a plaque recognizing Ted as an RCA Fellow in 1991.

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an odd twist, after the laboratory tour, the visitors asked if my wife could prepare dinner for them at our home. This was a bizarre request, but sensing something special, I called Brenda, who graciously agreed. Over a marvelous dinner, the visitors confided they were not with the Army, but another organization, and over dessert they pulled out an envelope, and gave us top-secret clearances and a business proposal: build an over-the-air interception device for all of the world’s cellular and paging transmissions in just three months. Wow! I asked if IEEE paper on WiFi sponsored by Schlotsky’s Deli. they could provide funding. They said, “No.” I asked if they could guarantee a purchase order. They WI-FI said, “No.” But, they said they would commit to buying Our second company, Wireless Valley Communications, $1million of product in our first year if it worked, and we started when members of Congress wanted to use would simply have to take their word. their cellphones on Capitol Hill. In 1995, they had Well, we did, and in three months, two of my students no coverage due to the thick walls of the capital. That and I invented CELLSCOPE and PAGETRACKER, summer, my student Roger Skidmore and I were hired to portable software radios capable of detecting over-themeasure cell coverage while congress was on recess. We air cellular and paging signals of every variety, in the saw the need to automate the process of cellular system design, and Wireless Valley was born. Our company’s basement of our home. We used the ping-pong table as software became the gold standard for the world’s indoor our manufacturing bench, and began exhibiting at CTIA and campus wireless networks — for both WiFi and trade shows.

Cellular.

We eventually had nine students – each had keys to our In fact, when I moved to Austin, Texas in 2002 to start a basement — who would come over to manufacture the new wireless center at The University of Texas, the CEO software radios. UPS picked up boxes of CELLSCOPEs of Schlotzky’s Deli came to visit me, with the idea of each week, prompting our neighbors to wonder if we offering free Wi-Fi to its customers. were dealing in drugs. TSR Technologies became a trusted drive test manufacturer for the young cellular In 2002, the world’s first public Wi-Fi network industry, and our product was so versatile that it could installations were not installed by Starbucks or also track down cellular criminals.

McDonalds or the Hilton Hotel, but by Schlotzky’s Deli, and my Ph.D. students Chen Na and Jeremy Chen! We I was burning the candle at both ends. Recruiting sold the company to Motorola in 2005. sponsors and advising students by day, designing products at night. I even went out a few times with ENTER 5G national law enforcement agents to find criminals who were cloaning phones. One of my first graduate Perhaps my most impactful wireless work, and I say students jointed the FBI, and captured the world’s most “Wireless work” since there is ONE OTHER AREA that wanted cyber thief in 1995 - Kevin Mitnick- using our you will soon see that has great personal meaning to CELLSCOPE, and it made the movies and TV shows like me, is the study of millimeter wave frequencies that Law and Order! launched 5G. Brenda and I eventually sold TSR to Allen Telecom in 1993, where our team helped build the world’s first cellular Emergency 911 position location system (E911). I then wrote the first wireless textbook and papers on E-911. The wireless book has been used in over 300 universities and is printed in eight languages, and I never get tired of signing copies for students!

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I knew since the 1990s that mmWave would have to happen for wireless. I have had terrific Ph.D. students such as Scott Seidel, Joe Liberti, Greg Durgin, Hao Xu, James Murdock, Felix Gutierrez, George MacCartney and Shu Sun who carried out the pioneering research and analysis. In fact, Joe, Greg, and James all wrote textbooks in addition to numerous papers.

cellular. It worked, and we told the world! We even deployed base stations in the streets on portable masts, to mimic future small cells to validate the 5G mmWave concept.

We launched the first Brooklyn 5G summit at NYU in 2014 to show the world what we were doing, and business and technical leaders, and the FCC, came to believe in our vision! Later, I helped Straightpath as an advisor, and they sold their 5G spectrum to Verizon last year, and now the world’s first 5G mmWave spectrum auction is taking place this week (second week in November, 2019)! To help the world learn about this, I wrote the first textbook on mmWave with Robert Heath at UT Austin and two of our top students.

Visualizing 60 GHz mmWave technology: 16 antennas on a 5mm square integrated circuit (2008).

SETBACKS, HOPE, AND NEW DISCOVERIES In the Fall of 2014, over just a couple of weeks, my youngest daughter had a near-fatal accident, and I then had a heart scare, spending five days in the hospital undertaking CT scans , X-rays, and a cardiac catheterization, thankfully without a need for a stent. I promised Brenda that I would change my life, and smell the roses, but my life came to crashing halt a few months later in March 2015, when I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia of intermediate variety. To those who have been touched by cancer, my sincere condolences and sympathies go to you and your families. What I was facing was potentially fatal.

Visualizing 60 GHz mmWave technology: Many future sub-THZ bands above 30GHz (today’s operational regions) are available for both cellular and outdoor applications (Rappaport, et. al., State of the art in 60 GHz, Proc. IEEE, 2011).

When the FCC opened up the 60 GHz spectrum for WiFi in the 1990s, we conducted the first studies showing how directional antennas could work better than today’s cellular and how chip antennas could be fit into phones and laptops. We showed the world the vast amount of spectrum that now could be opened up, and did the world’s first analysis and channel models to show the multi-gigabit data rates possible for mobile! In fact, look at all the spectrum that exists to the right of the white bubble on the lower left of this graph. That lower left white bubble is where all the word’s wireless is conducted today. The future is mmWave and THz!

During the month I spent in the NYU hospital for induction chemotherapy, I read binders of journal papers about Leukemia. I had gone from leading the world to 5G, to now hoping to live to see it happen. I was exhausted and weak after leaving the hospital, but we had to locate a transplant before the Leukemia came back. We selected Memorial Sloan Kettering, where the Chief of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Service, Dr. Sergio Giralt, is a world-leader.

His pioneering “T-Cell Depleted” transplant method

We conducted the world’s first experiments showing how well mmWave would work, both for suburban Austin, Texas in 2011. And, we did it in downtown New York City in 2012 – it felt as if no one believed what we were publishing. We were using just 1 W of transmitter power, showing incredible speeds and coverage for 800 MHz channel bandwidths, even when blocked by large buildings everywhere. This work was at 28, 38 and 73 GHz, 10 – 20 times higher frequencies than ever used in Students conducting mmWave experiments in New York City.

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no fever! It was a miracle. And now I am here with you today, three and a half years after my stem cell transplant, and I can tell you that I am grateful to everyone involved, and to God, for my recovery. I am here to tell you that prayer is the ultimate wireless communications!

Dr. Giralt at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

uses the most toxic chemotherapy to kill every white blood cell in your body – this takes about 10 days – and then you wait for another 10 days to be sure there are no living white blood cells left. You are completely defenseless without any immune system, so antibiotics are used continuously to fight infections. Then, the donor’s cells are introduced into the body, in hopes the bone marrow will begin to produce new healthy white blood cells and eventually a new immune system, just like a new born baby. Miraculously, my little brother, Caleb, was a 10 out of 10 donor match for a stem cell transplant. Thank you, Caleb!

Dr. Giralt told us that every stem cell transplant is like launching the Space Shuttle. I had many scary things happen during my transplant, some that Dr. Giralt had never seen before, but the worst nightmare happened 18 days into the treatment. I contracted C-Diff (Clostridium difficile), a bacterial infection that kills even healthy patients. I had a severe bacterial infection in my stomach and the antibiotics were not working. I was in deep trouble, and that night, a second type of antibiotics were unsuccessful. Completely dehydrated and with a 105 degree fever, I was down to the last resort ­— a third type of antibiotics that I had been allergic to at NYU. It was a gamble, but there was no other choice. If it did not work quickly, acid would eat through my stomach wall, and I would bleed out.

At 2 a.m., as I tried to sleep, I prayed harder and longer than I ever had in my life. I thanked God for the great blessings he had given me, and asked forgiveness for all of the people I had wronged. I asked Him to bless and protect Brenda and my children, and I asked him to please let me live, if it be His will. As I lay down to sleep, God spoke to me in an amazing vision, which I will tell some other time, in a way that was even more amazing than when I was 15 and when I met my wife, and said “You shall live a long life!”

Incredibly, I woke up late the next morning to a nurse by my side, telling me the C-Diff was gone, and I had

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After the transplant, I spent a year in quarantine, and my wife kept me alive, protecting me from germs and bad food that could kill me. I do not remember much that first year, but when I was not sleeping, I was doing research and publishing with students over email. To the outside, no one would know what had happened. I was very prolific, but when I look back now, it is a miracle that I am here, and I cannot comprehend what my wife and family went through as I began to heal. Thank you, Honey!

NEW FIELDS OF RESEARCH After getting out of the hospital with my little brother’s DNA and his new cells, I had another important research topic to pursue: My own survival, and how my experience could help others.

In the hospital, I had refused all of the x-rays during my stay, since I had formed a theory in the hospital of how to avoid a relapse of Leukemia. The medical community is not certain why patients relapse, but it is devastating when it happens.

My theory went like this: When you have no immune system, all forms of ionizing radiation should be avoided, since ionizing radiation is known to cause free radicals and unstable cells that can mutate and cause cancer.

In healthy immune systems, our white blood cells kill off the free radicals caused by x-rays. I reasoned that to avoid relapse, I should avoid ionizing radiation until my immune system had been built back (that takes a year or two), and this meant no flying, since above 10,000 feet, you are exposed to galactic ionizing radiation.

I told this theory to Dr. Giralt, explaining why I was refusing x-rays and flying, and he was intrigued. He admitted that doctors seldom think of ionizing radiation as a potential risk factor after stem cell transplant. A few days later, during one of my check-ups at his office, he brought up my theory, and what happened next was one of the most meaningful things in my life.

In just a few minutes, we devised a plan to test my theory using the historic outcomes of transplant patients and the known doses of radiation from common imaging procedures during the first year after a patient’s stemcell transplant. We would look and see if there was any correlation between radiation and long-term survival or relapse.

A few months later, while I was still in quarantine in NYC, and wearing a mask and gloves in public as I had to do for the first year, Dr. Giralt invited me to

the hospital, now not as a patient, but as a research colleague, to kick off our study of radiation effects after transplant.

median cumulative radiation dose is 21 mSv, about one CT scan, in the first year. This was not known until our study.

For as long as I live, I shall never forget how moving it was to walk into the conference room, with all of the doctors of the transplant ward — the doctors who saved my life — sitting around the table, as Dr. Giralt introduced me as the co-investigator from NYU on a new landmark study at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Figure 1 shows both overall and relapse free survival rates. The black curves arefor 10 mSV or less total radiation in the first year, and corresponds to the best likelihood of survival — 90% of the patients over the 14year study period lived beyond 5 years after the first year, or beyond 6 years after transplant. The Pink Curve is the worst outcome, with only 40% of patients living beyond 6 years after transplant, and this group had 80 mSv or more of radiation in the first year after transplant.

A PUBLISHED STUDY EMERGES Earlier this year, we published the first paper on radiation impact on transplant patients in the Journal of Blood and Bone Marrow.

We analyzed survival rates after TCD allogeneic HCT based on different levels of ionizing radiation exposure in the first year post-transplant period. In other words, we analyzed the survival rates for varying levels of known radiation exposures during the first year post-transplant to see what happened beyond 6 years after transplant. We calculated the cumulative 1-year radiation dosing or each patient, the median 1st year ionizing radiographic events: 9 (range 1–27), and the median radiation exposure 21.2 mSv (range 0 – 388 mSv).

The work studied 337 survivors Figure 1. Survival rates from the MSKCC-NYU post-transplant radiation study. of T-Cell Depleted Patients over a 14-year period - the first work of I intentionally had zero radiation during my 1st and 2nd its kind. We studied long term survival correlated to the year after transplant (I didn’t fly, either), as my theory amount of x-rays and other imaging received in the first made so much sense to me. year after transplant. As an approximate reference for radiation dosing, a global airplane trip is roughly oneRelapse and “death not related to relapse” was fifth of a millisevert, a mammogram is one-half of a correlated to the cumulative amount of radiation in the millisevert, a spinal x-ray is about 2 milliseverts, and a 1st year after transplant. Again, it is clear that higher PET Scan or CT Scan is about 25 milliseverts. I want to radiation exposure in the 1st year correlates with poorer stress that a normal person easily tolerates x-rays, but outcomes. These curves also show you why doctors tell after a T-Cell Depleted transplant, you are left with no you that if you can make it to 5 years past cancer, your immune system whatsoever. odds of survival “flatten out”, and become more like the normal population. The curves for all patients in • The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Patient the retrospective study become very stable after year 4 Population included: Recipients of first allogeneic following the 1st year (which is really the 5th year).

HCT with T-cell depleted grafts for AML, ALL, or MDS, 2000–2013, alive at 1 year post-transplant.

I am on the black line, with the star on these graphs Total Patient Population: 337. showing where I am today. I am hoping and praying to continue moving to the right without becoming a bad • We excluded patients who received a second statistic. The upshot of this study showed that for the allogenic HCT before the 1-year landmark. retrospective group, the likelihood of surviving for 6 The findings are remarkable. years beyond transplant is over 90% if you have only You can see that the 50%/median number of imaging a few x-rays in the first year after transplant, but drops events during the first year after transplant is 9, and the to 40% survival rate at year 6 if you have cumulative

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radiation comparable to 3 or more CT scans the first year after transplant. I hasten to add, however, that imaging is a vital part of health care, correlation is not causation, and in general, sicker patients will require more imaging, possibly contributing to these results.

NEW INSIGHTS FROM THE STUDY For me, avoiding radiation was smart.

This work has influenced patient care at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and more recently at Mayo Clinic, where they have invited me to give a talk on this study. This may help save Figure 2. Relapse and non-relapse mortality from the study. lives, and hopefully will cause doctors to be more selective REFERENCE and contemplative in ordering radiation procedures for immunocompromised patients. While correlation is not Christina Cho, Molly Maloy, Sean M. Devlin, Omer causation, these results are compelling.

Aras, H.R. Castro-Malaspina, Lawrence T. Dauer, Ann A. Jakubowski, Richard J. O'Reilly, Esperanza What kind of a doctor would listen to a patient, and B. Papadopoulos, Miguel-Angel Perales, Theodore S. invite him to join a world-leading team to study this Rappaport, Roni Tamari, Marcel R.M. van den Brink topic? A most amazing man — a man who is driven to and Sergio A. Giralt, “Characterizing Ionizing Radiation save lives daily, who battles the most despicable cancers.

Exposure after T-Cell Depleted Allogeneic Hematopoietic A man who brings hope and a cure to thousands. My Cell Transplantation,” Blood 2017 130:5504. family and I are so fortunate to know Dr. Giralt. This man, who saved my life — He is a true “superman.” He is Dr. Sergio Giralt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Giralt and Mrs. Giralt, would you both please stand, so I and the Radio Club of America can thank you.

CLOSING Since my transplant, I am learning how to feel things, to be in the moment, to take care of myself, to sleep, and to listen better than I have before. I am so fortunate to have been saved by radio, to have been saved by God, to have found Brenda, to have found the Radio Club of America, and to have had such a rich career in academia with amazing employers, colleagues and students, where I have played a role in the future of wireless, and now maybe will help save some lives, as well.

I will be honest. I am living a new normal. I have been given a second chance at life, and have come to realize that faith, family and friends (and good doctors) are the most important things. I never could have written the script for my life, and all of my blessings and terrific experiences. I am so thankful for my wife and children, and the connections I have had with my mentors, my students, my doctors, and the Radio Club of America.

From its scholarship program, to the support of its leaders, this club has played such an important role in my life. Thank you, Radio Club of America.

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Dr. Theodore (Ted) Rappaport is the David Lee/Ernst Weber Chaired Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and is a Professor of Computer Science at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He is also a Professor of Radiology at the NYU Langone School of Medicine. He is the founding director of NYU WIRELESS, one of the world’s first academic research centers to combine wireless engineering, computer science and medicine. Before launching NYU WIRELESS in 2012, he founded two other large academic wireless research centers: the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002, and the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG), now known as Wireless @Virginia Tech, in 1990. He is one of the most highlycited authors in the wireless field having published over 200 technical papers and over 20 books, and is a highly sought-after expert. He has over 100 patents issued or pending, and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

RCA'S 2018 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AND BANQUET

WERE A HUGE SUCCESS!

T

he Technical Symposium held in in New York City on Friday November 17, 2018 was a huge success.

RCA’s annual opportunity to hear about innovative wireless technology witnessed a packed room with over 70 physical attendees, and tremendous programs. The allday symposium has indeed become one of of the wireless industry’s premier events.

We had three major panels and two single presenters.

Presentations covered 5G Technology, an Interim Report on FirstNet, IoT, trends in HF transmission, RF propagation during the 2017 eclipse, and a historical presentation on the Harvard Radio School in World War I. Our youth panel explained their research project about solar powered digipeaters, and we received an update on RCA’s Youth Activities.

The presentation slides and the video of the presentations are available under the Technical Symposium tab on the RCA website. This year we live streamed the video using

Facebook Live. We had 1,000 people watching according to Facebook. Those who attended the event and needed continuing education units (CEUs) for their professional engineering licenses were able to do so for a nominal fee.

As in previous years, the Technical Symposium audience voted for the best presenters based on numerous criteria.

This year, first place was awarded to Dr. Ted Rappaport,Dr. Nathan "Chip" Cohen, and Jonathan Levine for their presentations on “The Science & Technology Behind 5G.” Second Place was awarded to Dr. Nathaniel Frissell for his presentation “RF Propagation During the August 2017 Eclipse."

Preparations are already underway for the 2019 Technical Symposium in New York City. A call for abstracts for this year’s Symposium is an invitation to prospective presenters to submit their ideas. Go to https://www.radioclubofamerica.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/03/Call-for-Abstracts-Tech-Symposium2019-1.0.pdf.

We hope to see you all in 2019!

THANK YOU TO OUR 2018 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM PRESENTERS In case you missed it, the presentations are available on RCA’s website.

• The Science & Technology Behind 5G: Dr. Chip Cohen (Fractal Antenna Systems), Dr. Ted Rappaport (NYU Tandon School of Engineering), Jonathan Levine (Mobilitie LLC) • Working With A Solar Powered Digipeater—Youth Presentation: Tucker Dunham, Abigail Heim John Facella (l) presents Dr. Ted Rappaport (c) and Dr. Chip Cohen (r) accepted the First Place Award at the 2018 RCA Banquet for their 2018 Technical Symposium presentation.

• Latest Trends in HF Data Transmission: Alan Spindel (Hal Communications) • Progress Report on RCA’s Youth Initiative: Carole Perry • RF Propagation During the August 2017 Eclipse: Dr. Nathaniel Frissel (NJIT) • How Will 5G Play Out?: Jonathan Levine (Mobilitie LLC) • Interim Report—FirstNet: Andy Seybold, Roman Kaluta (JPS Interoperability Solutions), Mike Worrell (FirstNet), Mary Doherty, (Motorola Solutions) • IOT Implementation—Pros and Cons: Paul Scutieri (Black & Veatch), Barry Einsig (CAVita), Clint Smith P.E. (Rivada Networks).

Dr. Nathaniel Frissell (l) received the Second Place Award at the 2018 RCA Banquet from John Facella (r) for his 2018 Technical Symposium presentation.

• A Tribute to WWI – The U.S. Naval Radio School at Harvard: David Bart (Radio Club of America, Antique Wireless Association) • Moderator: John Facella, P.E

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THANK YOU: 2018 BANQUET SPONSORS The Radio Club of America Board of Directors and its members would like to thank the generous event sponsors. Their support and contributions ensure that the Awards Banquet is a success and enjoyable for everyone. Be sure to tell them that you saw their company mentioned in the Radio Club of America Banquet Program.

3-YEAR SUSTAINING CORPORATE SPONSORS

WINE SPONSOR RadioResource

BRONZE

GOLD

BRASS

SILVER

THANK YOU 2018 DONORS • James Breakall • Karen Clark, Fellow • John Facella, Fellow 18

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

• Larry Hazelwood • Robert Lopez • Margaret Lyons

• June Poppele • Robert Walsh, Fellow

2018 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AND AWARDS BANQUET

John Facella moderated the Technical Symposium.

Jonathan Levine (l), Dr. Ted Rappaport (c), and Dr. Chip Cohen (r) reviewing the science of 5G.

Youth Presenters Tucker Dunham and Abigail Heim explained their experiments and demonstrated their solar powered digipeater.

Alan Spindel revealed the latest trends in HF data transmission.

Carole Perry provided a progress report on the latest RCA Youth Activities.

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2018 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AND AWARDS BANQUET

A full house attended the Technical Symposium; it was also live streamed to the internet.

Dr. Nathaniel Frissel outlined experiments in RF propagation during the August 2017 eclipse.

How will 5G play out? Jonathan Levine explained it.

David Bart commemorated the U.S. Navy’s World War I Harvard Radio School.

Andy Seybold (podium), Mary Doherty (l), Roman Kaluta (c), and Mike Worrell (r) provided an interim report on FirstNet.

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2018 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AND AWARDS BANQUET

Paul Scutieri (l), Clint Smith (c), and Barry Einsig (r) debated the pros and cons of IoT implementation.

This year’s sessions were highly interactive and featured excellent discussion and feedback.

The Technical Symposium always offers many opportunities for networking with our expert presenters.

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Save the Date!

110 TH TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AND BANQUET SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2019 NEW YORK CITY

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The World’s Oldest Professional Society Devoted to Wireless

Invites You to Submit Abstracts for Consideration for the 2019 Wireless Technical Symposium To be held on Saturday November 23, 2019, at the Westin Hotel in New York City We seek interesting or important work in any of the following areas of wireless communications: • Antennas, and supporting structures (towers, etc.)

• Broadband Communications • Broadcast • Cellular Communications Systems • Ham (amateur) Radio • Land Mobile Radio • Military Communications • Satellite • Semiconductors or other devices supporting wireless communications • Other Wireless Technologies of any kind We welcome “early work”, even if it’s still in process. RCA offers a unique opportunity to get an early reaction to important work in wireless communications, prior to later publication in other technical journals and societies such as the IEEE. Submit the following information by Friday May 24, 2019 (earlier submissions are encouraged) to be considered (Note: ALL information must be submitted to be considered): 1. Title of presentation 2. Presenter (s) names and contact information 3. Short bios of the presenter (s) 4. A 1-3 paragraph synopsis or abstract of the work to be presented and why you think the work is interesting or important to the wireless industry 5. A medium resolution headshot of the presenter (s) Those that are selected will be given approximately 45 minutes to present, and your presentation slides will be made available on the RCA Website after the event. Also, we are now recording all presentations and they are placed in the RCA Channel on You Tube. (Note that participants will have to fund their own travel to the event in New York.) If you wish to perform a demonstration, we can accommodate that, but it must be within your allotted 45 minutes.

For additional Information, and to see prior presentations and videos, go to https://www.radioclubofamerica.org/about-us/past-technical-symposiums.

Send abstracts to: info@radioclubofamerica.org and join Armstrong, Godley, Link, Sarnoff, and the countless other wireless pioneers of the RCA. www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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Save the date!

Education

Networking

Exhibits

And more…

Find out more at apco2019.org 24

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

RCA’S 2018

AWARD RECIPIENTS Congratulations to all of RCA’s 2018 award recipients. Each of them deserves recognition for their many individual contributions to radio and wireless communications. Their work has helped lead the way to creating, and also preserving, the arts and sciences that bring forth new technological advances for the benefit of the industry and mankind. Some of the recipients are shown below.

Dr. Theodore “Ted” S. Rappaort (l) receiving the Armstrong Medal from Tim Duffy (r).

Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen (l) receiving the Lee de Forest Award from David Bart (r).

Tim Duffy (l) presenting the President’s Award to Carroll Hollingsworth (r).

Chief Harlin McEwen (l) presenting the Patron Award to Robin Sorley (r).

James Stephen Walters (l) receiving the U.S. Navy Captain George P. McGinnis Memorial Award from Carroll Hollingsworth (r).

Bob Hobday (l) accepting the Ralph Batcher Award on behalf of June Poppele from Tim Duffy (r).

Chief Harlin McEwen (l) receiving the Special Recognition Award from John Facella (r).

Susan Swenson, recipient of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council Richard DeMello Award.

Alan Spindel accepting the Edgar F. Johnson Pioneer Award on behalf of Mark Allen.

Joseph L. Yurman (l) accepting the Fred M. Link Award from Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen (r).

RCA Young Achievers Abbie Heim (l) and Tucker Dunham (r).

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SOME CANDIDS FROM THE

RECEPTION AND BANQUET

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RCA'S 2018

LEE DE FOREST AWARD ACCEPTANCE ADDRESS EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen received RCA’s Lee de Forest Award at the 109th Radio Club of America banquet and awards ceremony. The Lee de Forest Award is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to the advancement of radio communications. The following text presents Dr. Cohen’s acceptance speech.

“DE FOREST, FRACTALS, AND INNOVATION”

L

ee de Forest was a key mover in the revolution that made wireless the technology of today. We celebrate tonight by continuing that important legacy of the great people of radio and wireless, particularly inventors.

Lee de Forest, as an inventor like the great Marconi before him, was motivated by a lofty goal: to improve the human condition. I want you to hold that thought, as all the inventors in this room, and there are many, are tied by that thread. But, you will not find inventor’s clubs meeting each week at Denny’s. We tend to work privately, with challenges others do not have. And, few inventors ever see success. I am going to give you a big reason why.

First, the nature of invention with de Forest as the example. Born of need, de Forest took A and B and skipped to Z, a very risky proposition. He did so by bridging seemingly different worlds spanning Hertzian waves, lamp making, and the gridiron of Yale football.

Such was the origin of the audion, the first radio vacuum tube. It even looks a little like a tiny football. But it is really a revolution contained in a light bulb.

Like de Forest, I combined disparate pieces of reality, and out of need, took risks by piecing them together.

This led to many fractal-based inventions, especially antennas, the creation of cloaking, and demonstrations of the invisible man. Want an analogy? Imagine combining apples with pineapples and getting someone to take a bite. While it is that strange fruit that ultimately bears verdant forests, to others, the benefits should be objective and obvious, but they almost never are. You play a waiting game that no one warns you about. Then, beyond reason, you are an overnight (and grateful for it) success. Few people, let alone families, companies or universities can wait years and go through the weird and chaotic machinations of an invention’s acceptance. But, many inventors do. They are the ultimate optimists. And, they and society are the ultimate winners.

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Dr. Nathan "Chip" Cohen (l) receives the Lee de Forest Award presented by David Bart (r).

Pundits love the phrase, “ahead of its time.” But inventors create for today and end up waiting for tomorrow. It is the world that is slow to catch up.

And, sometimes, they cut you down in your tracks.

You probably know de Forest had a rough time of it.

He almost went to prison—a first for a radio man—for claiming the audion was a world-changing invention. The charge deemed it a fraud. Yet, the Marconi Company backed him up, and he was acquitted. But, not without the judge first suggesting that de Forest get a real job.

Sheesh! Clearly, impact in innovation is fragile and riddled with the tentacles of doubt.

"We are sitting on a mountain of progress that only comes to light through erosion of the sides."

Have people’s attitudes changed in 100 years? Hardly.

Innovation evolves and changes our lives, but the DNA of negativity stays the same. The typical derailed and delayed acceptance remains in force. We are sitting on a mountain of progress that only comes to light through erosion of the sides. Efforts to improve the human condition have to come face to face with human nature.

Inventors are the brave ones that press on regardless.

Now, back to success, and onto RCA. I cannot overstate my gratitude to the Radio Club of America. In the joyous quest to create something new, you cannot function in a vacuum. Cheerleaders keep the spark alive. In other words, it is in RCA’s DNA to tell the future a different

story. We, as RCA members, have that rare ability to recognize the impact of innovation by seeing the future in the present.

So let us see that future in the present. I want all my colleagues who participated in the fractal antenna and invisibility cloak teams to stand (Editor: 15 people stood). Inventors invent. Teams implement. But, if you are really successful, they all become innovators. You are looking at my success. We did it together, and I am proud of all of you.

The culture of RCA reflects that insight: “We create the future.” You just saw a small piece of it, in the flesh.

We members, ALL the members of RCA, will continue to create, shape, enable, and bring forth the benefits of innovation to a growing wireless world. We ALL improve the human condition.

To quote the Blues Brothers, “we are on a mission from God.” And, I enthusiastically buy into the mission.

So, my gratitude is great as I accept this award, and to my friends, colleagues, and family, I humbly say “thank you.”

DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO WOULD BE A GREAT FIT FOR RCA? With our new online membership application (www.radioclubofamerica.org/membershipapplication) it’s easier than ever to get involved!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen is the CEO of Fractal Antenna Systems of Bedford, Massachusetts. He is a physicist and radio astronomer with a background in electromagnetics, fractal geometry, and imaging. A graduate of Brandeis University, he received an M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University and has held positions at Harvard, MIT, Cornell, and Boston Universities, Arecibo Observatory, and NASA (JPL and Ames). He has made substantial contributions to RF and antenna design applications as well as antenna optimization and manufacturing processes, and SETI. He is a pioneer in fractal engineering. He holds 52 U.S. utility patents, including ‘source’ patents on fractal antennas, fractal resonators, invisibility cloaks and deflector shields, fractal metamaterials and radiative transfer, fractal batteries, fractal absorbers, fractal lenses, and 3D printing. He is recognized as a leading world authority on these and related subjects. He has published over 100 technical articles and four books and is a Fellow of the Radio Club of America, where he previously received the Alfred Grebe Award. He is a member of IEEE and Managing Editor of the journal FRACTALS.

RCA members include inventors, scientists, industry professionals, members of the press, the FCC, government agencies, and world class amateur operators. We were there at the dawn of radio history and are committed to keeping our members up to date on the latest in wireless technology. RCA believes in the future of the industry and your membership will help us with the important work of encouraging the next generation of wireless pioneers and entrepreneurs.

Help spread the word about why you belong, and direct potential members to www. radioclubofamerica.org/about-us/how-tojoin to learn more about the benefits of membership!

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RCA'S 2018

FELLOWS ADDRESS

RCA’s 2018 Fellows (L-R): Charles Kirmuss, Martha Carter, Brian Casciano , Patti Ryg, and Steven R. Ahmed.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Martha Carter spoke on behalf of the 2018 Class of Fellows inducted at the 109th Radio Club of America Banquet and Awards Ceremony. Each year RCA inducts those who have made outstanding achievements and contributions to the art and science of radio communications or broadcast or the Radio Club of America. The following text presents Ms. Carter’s acceptance speech. Biographical information about Ms. Carter is located at the end of her comments.

G

ood evening. My name is Martha Carter. I have the privilege to serve as the respondent for those Radio Club of America’s members whose membership status is being elevated to the prestigious designation of Fellow.

To be elevated to this membership designation, the RCA member had to have made significant contributions to the art and science of radio communications, or broadcast, or to the Radio Club of America and are deemed outstanding by the Club.

When I was asked to serve as the respondent for the Fellows, my first thought was… “what an honor!!!” And then, panic set in as I started to think about what I could possibly say to this audience about the importance of this association and designation of Fellow.

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membership in this association. When I look at these individuals, I see: • Inventors.

• Representatives from wireless technology.

• LMR engineers.

• Sales executives.

• System integrators.

• Communications strategists.

• Public safety communications professionals.

While we may be diverse in our professions, we all have one thing in common: our passion for communications in some shape or form.

I have spent the last 37 years in public service, and specifically the last 30 years in public safety and 9-1-1 emergency communications. I stand in awe of the fact that I am a user of the technology that some of the Radio Club’s members actually invented.

The pace at which technology is evolving has so much potential for not only making our lives easier; but, from my perspective, it has the potential of providing new and innovative ways in which we can serve our citizens.

Use of this technology can provide more efficient and effective tools to assist our public safety agencies. That is why I am involved in public safety communications.

This association is over 109 years old, and its membership is made up of pioneers of wireless technology, inventors, engineers, legends in radio broadcasting, educators, and developers of a technology that began as the foundation of the modern technology that we use today.

It is the passion that each of has that drives us forward in the communications industry. Just like most of you:

The Fellows before you tonight are just as diverse as our

• I remember party lines, and coin phones.

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

• I remember what it was like prior to cell phones, what it was like not to know where callers were calling from when they needed help from a police officer or fire fighter or ambulance.

• I also know how radio technology has evolved from tube technology to transistors to integrated circuits and from low band to UHF/VHF to 800/700 MHz to trunking, simulcast systems to P25 systems and IP based technology.

Cell phone technology has changed in ways that enable us in the 9-1-1 profession to be able to know a phone number, cell tower location, longitude and latitude coordinates (xy) of the caller. This technology enables us to have more information that we have ever had in the past, so that we can find our fellow American citizens when they call for help.

And, hopefully, we will have that z-axis or vertical information soon, so when a citizen calls 9-1-1 for help from a multistory building or high rise, we will truly have a dispatch-able location, so our first responders will know exactly which door to kick down.

FRESH CONTENT – ON THE –

RCA WEBSITE RADIOCLUBOFAMERICA.ORG

To my fellow RCA “fellows,” congratulations to each of you.

On behalf of the 2018 Fellows, we all want to say thank you to the Radio Club of America’s Board of Directors for your vote of confidence in bestowing the designation of Fellow to each of us.

On a personal note, 10 years ago this month, my husband Willis Carter became an RCA Fellow. I told him when we got married 33 years ago that I would follow him anywhere. I guess this proves that I have and will!

Thank you again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ms. Carter earned a B.A. in Political Science and Government from Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Martha has worked in government and public safety communications for over 33 years.

She is a member, and newly named Fellow, of the Radio Club of America. She has been a member of the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) since 1989 where she currently serves as Immediate Past President. The majority of Ms. Carter’s professional career has been in public service as 9-1-1 Administrator for Caddo Parish (LA). In 1988, she became the first woman in Louisiana to hold the title of 9-1-1 Administrator. She is responsible for the overall management and administration of the 9-1-1 emergency system for the parish, which receives approximately 400,000 calls per year and supports over 85 public safety and local governmental entities. Her service at APCO has encompassed many leadership roles at the local, regional, national, and international levels. She received the APCO Life Member Designation in 2014.

The RCA website is the go-to place for RCA news and events.

VISIT THE SITE FOR: • Member only content including the 2018 Technical Symposium slides and videos • Updated membership list, including email address and call sign (login required) • Calendar of upcoming RCA and industry events • Updated Wireless Women tab to assist women and youth • Updated committees page • Updated publications archive • New products in the RCA store • Training Tab lists available wireless training opportunities • Current articles about youth outreach

TROUBLE LOGGING IN? Please email Amy@radioclubofamerica.org if you need a new password or have difficulty logging in.

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IT'S TIME TO HONOR THE

DISTINGUISHED AND DESERVING While technology is important to wireless technology, this industry is really about the people. People who invent, create, inspire and collaborate to create the products, services and companies that make this industry one of a kind.

accomplishments of both RCA members and nonmembers.

We are currently taking applications for two different categories of honors bestowed by the Radio Club of America on an annual basis. One is the elevation of existing members to the grade of Fellow. RCA Fellows are selected based upon their outstanding contributions and extraordinary qualifications in the art and science of radio and electronics. All Fellows will be recognized at the annual Banquet in November. The form and instructions for submission can be found on the following pages.

To submit a nomination, complete the form on the following pages and submit it with the instructions on the form.

The Radio Club has also established awards recognizing the outstanding achievements and

Not all awards are given every year and descriptions of each award can be found on the RCA website at: www.radioclubofamerica.org/about-us/awards.

Fellow and Award nominations are reviewed by the Awards Committee and their recommendations are forwarded to the full RCA Board of Directors for a final decision. Recipients are notified in advance so they can make their plans to attend the RCA Banquet and Awards Ceremony in New York City on Saturday, November 23.

NOMINATIONS DUE MAY 30, 2019.

To submit a nomination, complete the form on the following pages and submit it in accordance with the instructions on the form.

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2019 Award Nomination Form The Club recognizes achievement with several major awards which are presented at the annual Awards Banquet. These awards are meant to provide public recognition to outstanding individuals. Club membership qualifies you to submit nominations for individuals who meet the criteria of an individual award at the highest level.

Qualifications for each award are on the RCA website. Please review the qualifications carefully prior to making your nomination. Please note that all sections of the form are mandatory and all nominations require a fully completed form to be considered.

Nomination forms should be submitted by May 30, 2019 to allow time for the Awards Committee to do their initial review of the nominations and submit a list of nominees to the RCA Board of Directors for final approval.

Submit the Awards Nomination Form to the Club’s Awards Committee in any of the following ways: • Print the form and fax it to (612) 430-6995 • Email the form to info@radioclubofamerica.org • Print the form and mail it to Radio Club of America, 13570 Grove Drive #302, Maple Grove, MN 55311 Name of RCA Award: __________________________________________________________________ Full name of candidate: ________________________________________________________________ Please share the three main reasons why this individual should be considered for this award, listing significant achievements and contributions that are alignment with the award’s intention.

1.

2.

3.

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2019 RCA Award Nomination Form | Page 2 Please attach or provide a link to a biography, resume, and list of prior awards or published articles that support the specific requirements of this award nomination and your candidate’s eligibility. Please attach separate pages if needed.

All awards are presented in person to the winner during the RCA Awards Banquet. To the best of your knowledge, if selected, will the nominee be able to attend the 2019 Awards Banquet in New York, NY? ____________________________________________________________________

Please provide contact information for the nominee: Name: __________________ Phone number: __________________ Email address: __________________

Please provide your contact information: Name: __________________ Phone number: __________________ Email address: __________________ Date submitted: ___________________

Radio Club of America, Inc. 13570 Grove Drive #302, Maple Grove MN 55311 www.radioclubofamerica.org | info@radioclubofamerica.org (612) 405-2012

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FLORIDA ENGINEERING STUDENTS TREATED TO SPECIAL PRESENTATION ON LIFE IN SPACE AND HAM RADIO COMMUNICATION

By Arielle and Ashley Perry EDITOR’S NOTE: The following firsthand account provides a glimpse into the Radio Club of America’s Youth Activities engagement with high school students. An earlier version of this article appeared in the February 10, 2019 edition of The Torch, the student newspaper of the Olympic Heights, Florida high school. We are grateful to the authors for contributing this article to the RCA Proceedings.

T

he freshman and senior Olympic Heights High School (OH) engineering students received an outof-this-world experience on January 18 when Ms. Carole Perry, a renown international speaker on wide range of topics, (and in the interest of full disclosure, the grandmother of the writers of this article), visited OH to give a presentation about ham radio and life in space.

Ms. Perry has spoken to thousands of young people all around the world, including students in India and Germany, sparking their interests in ham radio and inviting them to get their Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ham radio licenses.

Ms. Perry is a volunteer for a non-profit organization called Radio Club of America (RCA), where she is a director and the chairperson of the Youth Activities program. Prior to her retirement, she taught a class titled Introduction to Amateur Radio in a Staten Island, New York middle school for 30 years, writing the curriculum for New York City schools for teachers incorporating ham radio in their schools.

Over the years, she and her students have had incredible opportunities to communicate with over 16 different astronauts, and Ms. Perry has personally met famous

Ms. Carole Perry captivated Olympic Heights Engineering Students with her presentation.

individuals through her remarkable work, including Marty Cooper (inventor of the cell phone), as well the producer of the hit TV show Last Man Standing, John Amodeo, and the show’s leading actor, Tim Allen.

The purpose of the OH visit, however, was to introduce ham radio as a communications skill and as a fun hobby. Part of her goal was to introduce the students and teachers to study a license manual that she will send them so they can obtain their own FCC radio license, and so they could one day operate their own equipment.

Ms. Perry’s presentation comprised a variety of scientific and mathematical fun-facts related to outer space and the brave astronauts who dare to penetrate its mysterious boundaries. She commenced her speech with a brief introduction about ham radio and its practical uses, including the ability to send out wireless messages in times of need to anyone in the world in the event of an emergency or disaster.

Two freshman enjoying the hands on experience of using the code practice oscillators.

Ms. Perry explained to the classes, “It is a valuable communications skill for emergencies because it does not require infrastructure (cell towers).” She also noted how operators and students have communicated with astronauts in space utilizing ham radio, asking them common questions such as, “What did it feel like when you were on www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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the Space Shuttle?” or “How do you go to the bathroom in space?”

“Seeing the informal side, or human side of astronauts, instead of the formal side was really nice to see.”

She then proceeded to test the knowledge of the aspiring OH students by asking them directly several mathematical questions such as, “What is the speed of the ISS traveling around earth?” Many of the students were surprised to learn that the answer to that question is five miles per second. As a reward for correct answers, freeze-dried packages of astronaut ice cream were distributed to the students.

After a brief discussion about the video, Ms. Perry then distributed her custom made Morse Code Practice Oscillators (CPOs). CPOs are miniature telegraph keys that allow students to practice Morse Code. For thirty years, this is how her students in Staten Island practiced and learned how to transmit in code on the ham radio.

When she collected the telegraph keys at the end, the students were having so much fun that they were reluctant to give them up.

The excitement and energy of the students was evident, as the teenagers eagerly leaned forward, engrossed by the captivating information and facts that were provided.

“I thought it was interesting how less than one percent of the total human population has ever gone into space, and how an astronaut can grow up to three percent of their height,” admitted OH Astronaut Challenge Team senior Alex Glotov.

Following the questions, the assembled group received the unique opportunity to view a homemade astronaut DVD depicting life onboard the space shuttle. Ms. Perry received this DVD on one of her invited trips to the Johnson Space Center where she met in person with the astronauts she and her students had spoken with on their ham radio at school.

Ms. Nimmi found the demonstration and instructions on Morse Code an enlightening model for her own students. “Engineers are problem-solvers,” she indicated. “So it was interesting to see how Morse Code has solved problems especially those in disaster situations. It was also demonstrated Ms. Nimmi (l), the engineering acadhow it can always come emy teacher, and Carole Perry (r) in handy to communicate with the code practice oscillator. with others.”

One student, Astronaut Challenge Team senior Alexa Cole, was especially impressed at seeing her textbooks come to life. Instead of just gathering her facts and knowledge from her textbook, she enjoyed seeing the actual images being applied on the DVD. “It was nice having the information that we learned being able to apply to other spheres of knowledge,” she commented.

Students learning Morse code.

Ms. Perry commented that she was delighted at the enthusiastic responses; especially from girls, about the presentation. Freshman engineering student Kimberly Ticlavilca even responded that the video has sparked her curiosity about space and life on board the Space Shuttle and has heightened her desire to find out more about the topic.

The DVD demonstrates astronauts having fun in zero gravity, doing flips in the air, sleeping standing up while attached by Velcro to the wall, playing with toys such as yo-yos, eating, and putting their pants on both legs at the same time. Everyone, including teachers Mrs. Nirmala Arunachalam (Ms. Nimmi) and Ms. Laura Del Calvo, were very mesmerized by what they learned.

Freshmen engineering teacher Ms. Del Calvo enjoyed the demonstration, claiming, “My favorite part of the presentation, of course, was watching the home video because it showed the daily routines of the astronauts which is something that is pretty rare to see.”

Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science/senior engineering teacher and sponsor for the Astronaut Space Challenge team, Ms. Nimmi, agrees with Ms. Del Calvo that the video was extremely interesting, expressing, 36

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

Left to right: Ms. Nimmi, Arielle Perry, Carole Perry, Ms. Laura Del Calvo, and Ashley Perry. Ms. Nimmi and Ms.Del Calvo are the engineering academy teachers who attended the presentation

too will be able to achieve their dreams and shoot for the stars.”

The RCA website now features photos from the presentation under the Youth Activities tab; the images themselves are on a revolving image slider at https://www.radioclubofamerica.org/.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

One of the student’s from Ms. Nimmi’s class (l) and Carole Perry

After the presentation concluded, Ms. Nimmi asked about the next steps for her to obtain her own FCC license, at which point Ms. Perry volunteered to send the license manual. Other students also eagerly approached Perry to inform her of their desires to qualify for FCC licenses so that they can enhance their communications skills and speak to other hams worldwide.

The presentation was especially timely because on February 19, the OH Astronaut Challenge Team was invited to do a Skype call with some of the astronauts on the ISS through Florida Atlantic University. In fact, the research that the kids are doing for the Astronaut Challenge will be presented to a real astronaut, Steve Swanson, whom the team had previously met in December.

Ms. Perry has dedicated herself to motivating the future generation of engineers, astronauts, scientists, and others to strive for the best and to bolster their sense of community and pride. As for OH, she was thrilled to interact with such engaging students, adding, “It was fun to be part of the experience of watching young people get inspired to pursue creativity via technology. I hope that they

Students in Ms. Nimmi’s class.

Arielle Perry is the twin sister of Ashley Perry (below), Arielle attends Olympic Heights Community High School. She is interested in biological sciences and humanities. This year, Arielle is enrolled in five Advancement Placement and AICE college level classes, finding both AP Biology and AP Art History to be captivating. Arielle loves to travel and experience first-hand the various architectural styles, sights, and cultures first learned in her studies. This is Arielle’s third consecutive year working with The Torch, the student newspaper at OH, where she currently serves as Features Co-Editor alongside her sister. Arielle hopes to eventually write about her discoveries and findings and share them with the world.

Ashley Perry is a seventeen-year-old junior currently attending Olympic Heights Community High School in Boca Raton, Florida. She wants to pursue a profession that utilizes and combines her writing talents with her interests in science, research, and the humanities. At fourteen, Ashley represented her school in the national “Do the Write Thing Challenge,” and published her first article. She is enrolled currently in five Advanced Placement and AICE college-level courses, such as AP Biology. She serves as the Co-Features Editor of her school's student newspaper, The Torch, and has been involved for three years.

She also participates in the school’s selective literary magazine and is currently a contributing editor. Ashley enjoys traveling to various countries around the world with her family, gaining exposure to history, diverse cultures, technologies, and people of different backgrounds.

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VOICES OF TOMORROW SOLAR POWERED AMATEUR RADIO DIGIPEATER FOR EMERGENCY APPLICATIONS

By Tucker J. Dunham EDITOR’S NOTE: This issue of the Proceedings of the Radio Club of America brings another installment from the next generation of inventors and developers in wireless communications. The Voices of Tomorrow column provides a place for younger people to share their work in a professional setting. RCA is interested in finding students (primarily college- or high-school level) who are interested in writing about their explorations, ideas and contributions to wireless communications. We congratulate Tucker Dunham on his first professional publication, and we encourage submissions by others for future columns. Please contact David Bart, Proceedings editor at jbart1964@gmail.com for further information or to submit draft articles for publication.

A

fter watching the ravages of Hurricane Maria, our team sought to construct an amateur radio digipeater for use by emergency response teams. We presented our results at the Dayton Hamvention and the 2018 Radio Club of America Technical Symposium. This paper outlines our work.

THE NEED In October of 2017, Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico. Communication networks were obliterated. People were in need of help, and could not get vital food, water, or medications. In an emergency, under less than ideal conditions, transferring accurate information quickly is key. The solution: a rapid response emergency packet radio network1. Over the course of seven months of hard work, research, testing, and troubleshooting, we developed a solar-powered amateur radio digipeater for emergency networking applications. The compact, easily deployable unit can run indefinitely with solar panels and nighttime battery backup. It can be connected with a smartphone or computer to send messages to people miles away, even if there is no cellular service. Our hope is to provide rescue workers an efficient means of communication to help them save lives.

PROJECT DESIGNS We knew we could provide something beneficial, and we knew that ham radio would be the key element. Based on our observations from Puerto Rico, we concluded that the unit must have solar capability, because there was no commercial power available. We decided it would be in our best interest to have the digipeater capable of connecting to smart devices to relay information. It also had to be compact, so that it could fit in tight places. The digipeater design consists of low cost parts that all come together and make a self-sustaining unit. Some of the key components are a Raspberry Pi 3 B+, 2 Meter handy talky, folding antenna, solar panels, and a PVC enclosure.

THE HOUSING First we worked on designing the digipeater housing, or what was it going to reside in. One of the first containers we attempted to use was an ammunition can. The can was promising since it is easily obtainable, opens wide on top to allow easy access for repairs or modifications, and it is waterproof, keeping the electronics dry. After trying to use the ammunition can, we realized that it was not going to work; the steel was difficult to manipulate using the tools available to use, its form was not going work well for it to have solar panels, and the steel was very heavy and susceptible to corrosion. We considered another option, 3D printing a custom container. After careful consideration, we concluded it would take too long and the use of material was not efficient.

1

The concept of Digipeating signals.

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See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio.

The final design for the housing was as follows: • We used a 4 inch wide PVC pipe for the housing.

This worked very well, because it was a plastic material that is easily worked, and it can be sealed from the outside.

• We used the 3D printer to make a top cap, which seals the digipeater from the elements and protects the electronics. Since the cap is made of soft plastic, we can attach any accessory into the cap, such as the currently installed power connectors for the solar panels and a PL259 connector for use with many antennas.

• The unit has a 3D printed threaded bottom, allowing the digipeater to be put on a broom handle, allowing the user to hoist it higher for better signal transmission and reception.

Next, we had to decide which battery to use for nighttime battery backup. Lithium-ion batteries, although very high energy density, are relatively difficult to charge and can react explosively if they are overcharged, so we eliminated this option. Alkaline batteries only provide one-time use, so they were not seriously considered. Nickel cadmium (NiCad) batteries are rechargeable, but they are expensive and have a “memory-effect,” where it loses maximum capacity if a battery is re-charged before it is completely discharged.

Finally, we experimented with sealed lead acid batteries.

We discovered that they were easy to maintain a charge using the solar panels, were tolerant to being overcharged and undercharged, and they did not have the “memoryeffect” that afflicted the Ni-Cad batteries.

• Finally, we constructed the antenna from PVC so that it could be collapsible and waterproof, similar to the actual digipeater itself.

Mounting assembly for the solar panels.

THE RADIO Interior of the Digipeater assembly.

SOLAR PANELS AND POWER The PVC’s round shape was perfect for mounting solar panels that would power the system since they could receive sunlight from any direction. There are 12 solar panels mounted around the 4 inch PVC pipe. Each solar panel is specified at 5V at 500mA, but after real life testing, our results fell short of those specifications. In an ideal situation and in their current configuration, the solar panels should provide 2A at 15V. Even though the solar panels did not provide as much power as the specification sheet indicated, it was enough power to keep the batteries charged.

We designed a simple, three-part bracket and 3D printed the component to attach the solar panels to the PVC pipe.

It is a minimalist design that grabs the edges of the panel and hinges at the top. The back of the bracket sits flat against the pipe, while it is fastened using two 5 ½” hose clamps. The hinge on the bracket allows the solar panels to be adjusted to any angle for best sunlight reception.

The bracket and panels can be moved around the surface of the digipeater simply by loosening the hose clamps, repositioning the solar panels for optimal sunlight coverage, and then tightening them.

Finally, we faced the hardest problem: selecting the right radio. During initial testing, we used an inexpensive import brand radio. We identified the biggest problem, after hours of troubleshooting: the receiver on the radio was distorting incoming transmissions and was not able to transmit a usable digital signal. As a backup, we considered using a 60 watt Kenwood TM-271, but for simple digital transmissions, we decided this too much of an overkill and would draw too much power. After a few hours of searching online, we found the Yaesu FT-60, a radio that is well designed, did not distort digital signals, and did not draw too much power or deplete the batteries. In addition to the radio’s great engineering, it is very affordable at $150.

Digipeater radio mounting (left) and Raspberry Pi 3 (right).

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DIGITAL CONNECTIONS

RESULTS AND USE

We wanted our digipeater to connect with smart devices, such as a smartphone or laptop. We used a Raspberry Pi 3 B+. A Raspberry Pi2 is a low cost ($35) credit card sized computer capable of running Linux to process and move data. We placed a TNC-Pi “hat” on top of the Raspberry Pi as an add-on board that can interface with the Linux operating system. The TNC-Pi3 is a low cost card ($40) that enables the Raspberry Pi to act as a terminal node controller to send, receive and repeat AX.25 Packets using the 2 Meter handy talkie.

After we finished construction, we brought the digipeater outside and left it outdoors for a whole weekend in the backyard. During that time, local hams were able to connect to the digipeater and to send messages through it. Over the course of the weekend, with the use of the solar panels, the whole unit remained powered the entire time. At the conclusion of the weekend, the batteries still remained adequately charged.

Our device can also be used as a packet radio endpoint in addition to a digipeater. The Raspberry Pi 3 has an onboard wireless adapter. We configured the wireless adapter to serve as a WiFi access point. A user local to the digipeater can connect to the access point using a laptop or smartphone capable of common wireless access. Using a basic “telnet” program messages can be originated or received on the packet network. This access mode can also be used to configure or monitor the health of the digipeater.

We built a self-sustaining digipeater that can support itself indefinitely, and is safe from the elements. The digipeater is portable and can easily be placed on a tall building or hilltop to relay packet radio messages between several endpoints. If the need arises, additional digipeater nodes can be added to further extend the range of the network.

The team learned many things while building and testing this digipeater. The primary lesson was to make certain the transceiver is well designed and did not distort outgoing or incoming packets. We also learned that solar panels may not always provide the amount of power initially claimed.

Everyone learned that under load, solar panels have a voltage curve, and when more current is drawn, less voltage appears on the panels. Given these important discoveries, adjustments were made, and the final result was successful transmission.

I thank my classmates for their help and support with this project. I also acknowledge Abigail Heim, KD2PUA, for her help on the project, in particular for her help on the antenna assembly, and finally, the members of the 721st Mechanized Contest Battalion for their guidance and mentoring.

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS Tucker Dunham, KD2JPM, is 18 and a senior electronics student at Warren County Technical School in New Jersey.

Originally licensed in October 2015, he upgraded to General Class in June 2018. Tucker is also an Associate Certified Electronics Technician. He is a member of the WC2FD and W3OK radio clubs and enjoys participating in multiple events with each club. Tucker was accepted to Rochester Institute of Technology where he will study microelectronics, fulfilling his goal is to pursue an Electronics Technology career and hobby. As a Boy Scout, he has earned the Radio Merit Badge and has achieved his Eagle Scout Award. Tucker received the Radio Club of America Young Achiever Award in November 2018.

Digipeater closed for transport (left) and open for use (right).

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2

See https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3 model-b-plus/.

3

See https://tnc-x.com/TNCPi.htm.

SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS | www.radioclubofamerica.org

Abagail Heim, KD2PUA is 16 and currently a third year student at Warren County Technical School in New Jersey.

She earned her Amateur Radio license this year and is a proud member of the 721st Mechanized Contest Battalion radio club. In her free time, she trains in kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, She also likes to read, loves spending time outdoors and is an avid photographer. Abagail received the Radio Club of America Young Achiever Award in November 2018.

Demonstrating the Digipeater assembly at the 2018 RCA Technical Symposium.

Don't forget to register for the 2019 RCA Technical Symposium at: www.radioclubofamerica.org

JOIN RCA AT HAMVENTION 2019 MAY17-19 Dayton Hamvention is just around the corner on May 17-19, and once again, RCA will be highly visible at the show.

We are looking forward to connecting with old friends and reaching out to new, potential members to share the value of belonging to RCA. We hope to see you at one or more of the following!

Stop by to say hello to your fellow RCA members at Booth 1811!

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AWA Congratulates The RCA Award Recipients and New Fellows!

AWA is dedicated to preserving and sharing nearly 200 years of the history of communication technologies

AWA cordially invites RCA members to join AWA. Save 5% with a Partner membership at www.antiquewireless.org/joinrenew Visit the world famous Antique Wireless Museum in Bloomfield, New York near Rochester

RCA Member Exclusive OFFER Special Offer for RCA Members Opting for a 3 Year or Lifetime Membership* We have a fully restored commemorative recording of the 50th Anniversary of the Radio Club of America. In the over 40 minutes of recordings you will hear the voices of W.E.D. Stokes, the first chairman of RCA; Capt. H.J. Rounds who won the Armstrong Medal in 1952; Major E.H. Armstrong, inventor of frequency modulation and the superhetrodyne receiver; Paul Godley, the RCA member who went to Scotland in 1921 to receive transmissions from the U.S. in the famous Transatlantic Tests; and Walter Knoop, RCA’s president in 1959. You will also hear Morse code (CW) being sent by vice president Harry Hough on a 1909 spark gap transmitter.

*The commemorative recording is available as a free download to: • New or renewing members who join or renew for a 3 year membership (when you join or renew by June 30, 2019) • All current and future life members Questions? Contact us at Amy@radioclubofAmerica.org Thanks to the thoughtful efforts of the daughter of a former member, we received a set of two LP records that were issued to RCA members at the Golden Jubilee 50th Anniversary of the Club in 1959. The records were moved to digital media in 2019 thanks to RCA member and former director Lou Manno.

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NEWS ITEM

Radio Club of America (RCA) and the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) Announce the 2019 Young Professionals Award Recipients

T

he Young Professionals Award program is an IWCE initiative, operated in cooperation with RCA. These industry leaders, all under age 35, were nominated for their creativity, initiative and significant contributions to their organization and to the field of communications technology. A committee of RCA members selected the final roster of winners, which is shown below. These individuals are executing some of our industry's most innovative ideas.

Each Young Professional awardee received a 1-year RCA membership or extension of their current membership.

They were publicly recognized at the RCA Breakfast during IWCE 2018 on Thursday, March 19.

“We are honored to partner with IWCE in presenting this exciting program,” said Carol Hollingsworth, RCA president. “The award winners represent the next generation of experts in engineering, operations, public safety, software design, product development, marketing,

information technology, finance and strategy. They are an impressive group from a wide range of wireless organizations. We welcome them to RCA, and we are eager to follow their future careers.”

Stephanie McCall, IWCE show director, stated, “Congratulations to the 2019 Young Professional Award winners. We are thrilled to honor the rising stars of the telecommunications industry for their impressive work and accomplishments. We are looking forward to seeing their many contributions in future years.”

THE 2019 AWARD RECIPIENTS: • Michelle Cahn, Head of Marketing, Rapid SOS • Michael Caston, Senior Support Engineer, Avtec, Inc. • Lauren Eastwood, System Integration Engineer II, Avtec, Inc. • Austin, Eisele, Regional Principal Consultant, AT&T FirstNet • Adam Geisler, Senior Public Safety Advisor—Tribal, First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) • Elizabeth Grossenbacher, Marketing Manager, AppDynamics • James Miller, Radio Systems Administrator, Hamilton County Public Safety Communications • Victor Hernandez, Project Manager, PowerTrunk, Inc. • Anthony Ibrahim, Vice President—Technology Solutions, Chartis Federal • Matthew Ondriezek, Staff Engineer, Booz Allen Hamilton • Guido Perez, Business Development mManager, MST Global • Michael Perez, Program Manager, AT&T • Maria Rowe, Director of Marketing and Communications, JVCKENWOOD USA Corp.

• Nick Smith, Project Manager, Airosmith Development • Jon Szeliga, National Sales Director, Engineering Wireless Services

www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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NEWS ITEM

O

fficials from 15 countries met in Rome on March 12, 2019, to create an intergovernmental governing body for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a huge radio telescope under construction in South Africa and Australia. The meeting, held at the Italian Ministry of Research and Education, included 7 countries: Australia, China, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. The 7 countries signed a convention to create the SKA Observatory.

SKA officials are hopeful that the remaining participating members

Convention Signed to Establish Governing Body for the Square Kilometre Array

of the SKA will sign the convention at a later date. These include India and Sweden (considered as founding members) and Canada, France, Spain, and New Zealand. Additional countries have expressed their interest in joining the SKA Organization, which will continue to expand over the coming years.

The SKA will consist of hundreds of radio dishes and thousands of antennas spread out across thousands of kilometers in both Australia and southern Africa. It is intended to study gravitational waves, investigate the nature of fast radio bursts, map

Seven countries have signed a convention to create the Square Kilometre Array Observatory.

(Courtesy:SKA)

hundreds of millions of galaxies, and look for signs of life in the universe.

Catherine Cesarsky stated: “Rome wasn’t built in a day. Likewise, designing, building and operating the world’s biggest telescope takes decades of efforts, expertise, innovation, perseverance, and global collaboration. Today we’ve laid the foundations that will enable us to make the SKA a reality.”

All the signatories in Rome became founding members of the SKA Observatory. As an intergovernmental organization, the SKA Observatory will be equivalent to the CERN particlephysics laboratory near Geneva and the European Southern Observatory.

It will oversee building and operating the SKA telescopes over the next 50 years.

Before the SKA Observatory can come into existence, the convention will first need to go through each of the separate national parliaments to be ratified. That process varies depending on the country, but it is expected to take between 12 and 15 months according to SKA spokesperson William Garnier, who is stationed at the SKA’s headquarters at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester, UK. The SKA

Support RCA Youth Activities by Donating Your Frequent Flyer Miles Due to the efforts of Carole Perry, the Youth Activities Program has been very successful. During the year, Carole travels all over the country to meet with people and to speak on behalf of the program. Almost all of the travel is at Carole’s personal expense. You can help by donating your frequent flyer miles to the Radio Club. If you would like to participate, please contact Carole Perry at wb2mgp@gmail.com and she will assist you.

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Artists rendering of the SKA

Observatory could become operational by mid-2020. In the meantime, other countries that have not yet taken part in formal negotiations to form the SKA Observatory could do so.

operations by the mid-2020s, it is anticipated to generate some 600 petabytes of data every year that will be processed by 2 supercomputers.

Nine multinational consortia are now finalizing the SKA’s design, which is expected by the end of the year.

Beginning in late 2020, about $788 million of contracts to build SKA are expected to be awarded to companies in SKA member countries, which marks the start of construction for the 1st phase of the project. When the SKA commences its scientific

Anna Scaife, from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in the UK stated: “The SKA project is not only about astronomy but also about pushing the boundaries of computing and technology. Signing the treaty for the SKA brings us closer to answering some of the most important questions in advancing our understanding of the universe.”

REFERENCES M. Makoni and M. Banks. “Convention signed to establish governing body for the Square Kilometre Array,” physicsworld, Mar. 12, 2019. https:// physicsworld.com/a/conventionsigned-to-establish-governing-bodyfor-the-square-kilometre-array/?utm_ medium=email&utm_sour.

SKA Telescope: Square Kilometre Array website. https://www. skatelescope.org/.

Display your RCA membership with pride!

We are pleased to announce that you can now purchase RCA apparel from our online store. Options are available for men and women.

Order now at https://stores.goldmedalideas.com/rca.

www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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NEWS ITEM

R

adio frequency (RF) signatures detected by the RF Seismograph propagation tool also could be indicating earthquakes, and may even be able to predict them shortly before they occur. A real-time high-frequency (HF) propagation-monitoring tool developed by Alex Schwarz, VE7DXW, in British Columbia, Canada, is exploring the possibility with the Modulation – Demodulation Software Radio (MDSR) team. The RF Seismograph shows both band noise and activity or band activity alone on 6 HF bands. It is a project of the North Shore Amateur Radio Club (NSARC).

“We had been doing the solar eclipse experiment, and we developed the RF Seismograph software to look for changes in propagation during the eclipse,” Schwarz explained. “After the eclipse, we decided to leave the

“RF Seismograph” May Be Real Seismograph

RF Seismograph running, and we have now collected 4 years of data.”

The system uses an omni-directional multiband antenna to monitor JT-65 frequencies—±10kilohertz (kHz)—on 80, 40, 30, 20, 15, and 10 meters.

Recorders monitor the background noise and display the result in 6 color-coded, long-duration graphs displaying 6 hours of scans. When signals are present on a band, its graph trace starts to resemble a series of vertical bars.

Most recently, the RF Seismograph recorded the magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Ecuador on February 22. Schwarz recounted that noise on 15 meters began to be visible about 1 hour before the quake; then, 2 hours after the quake released, 15 meters started to recover. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake was about 82 miles below ground. It did not affect 80 meters. Schwarz

speculated that the quake was easy to see on the RF Seismograph because 15 meters typically is not open during hours of darkness—especially when the solar flux is only 70.

Following a magnitude 5.0 earthquake off the coast of Vancouver Island, his RF Seismograph picked up changes.

Canada’s government-run Earthquakes Canada website was able to provide Schwarz with a list of magnitude 6.0 or greater events since the RF Seismograph went into operation, and the 2 teams have been collaborating to find a correlation between HF propagation anomalies and earthquakes. With the measurements, Schwarz has been attempting find a correlation between the list of past geological events and what his RF Seismograph may have sensed on those occasions.

“The earthquakes show up as RF noise because of the electric field lines, now scientifically confirmed to change the way the ionosphere reflects RF,” Schwarz said. He cited an article in the October 2018 edition of Scientific American, which, he says, “explains it really well.” (See Erik Vance’s “Earthquakes in the sky,” Scientific American, October 2018, p. 44).

The Scientific American article explores measurements in Japan used to examine how earthquakes can create electric field lines that extend into the atmosphere.

“Could they be used to detect earthquakes before they cause damage on the planet?” Schwarz asks.

The RF Seismograph indicates an increase in 80-meter noise (red trace) corresponding with an earthquake west of Port Hardy, British Columbia (see map).

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Schwarz said 171 earthquakes—all magnitude 6.0 events or greater— were studied, and only 15 of them had no RF noise

Illustration from Scientific American explaining electrical disturbances from earthquakes.

associated with them. In 26 cases, the time of the disturbance detected by the RF Seismograph failed to match the USGS-reported time of the quake.

Schwarz said that in 72 percent of the earthquake studies, the RF Seismograph was able to detect an increase in noise on 80 meters, typically before and after the event.

“More analysis is needed,” Schwarz has concluded. “The study is still continuing and we need your help to set up more monitoring stations.”

RF Seismograph is now a project on Scistarter.com, facilitated through Arizona State University. Schwarz said Scistarter hosts “interesting projects for all ages and backgrounds” and “provides a vehicle for young people

that are interested in science to get real live experience in this field.”

Mod-DemodSoftwareRadio-VE7DXWON6MU.pdf.

REFERENCES

Erik Vance, “Earthquakes in the sky,” Scientific American, October 2018, p. 44. http://www.ep.sci.hokudai. ac.jp/~heki/pdf/Scientific_American_ Vance2018.pdf.

Earthquakes Canada – Canada.

Natural Resources Canada website. http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan. gc.ca/index-en.php.

“News: VE7DXW’s “RF Seismograph” May Be Real Seismograph,” ARRL Letter, Feb. 28, 2019. http://www.arrl.org/news/ve7dxws-rf-seismograph-may-be-realseismograph.

A. Schwarz, VE7DXW, and G. Roels, ON6MU. Modulation – Demodulation Software Radio: Build your own IF SDR and Introduction of MDSR V3.0, https://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC2015-

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NEWS ITEM

T

he US Navy's Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) has adopted amateur radio training as a possible new approach to basic radio frequency (RF) and electronics instruction.

More than 20 NAWCWD employees took part in a week-long class in Point Mugu, California, in December.

The class, which culminated in an examination session for the Technician license, offered NAWCWD employees a novel approach to teaching radio propagation, said Brian Hill, KF4CAM, the lead for electromagnetic maneuver warfare experimentation in the NAWCWD Avionics, Sensors and E*Warfare Department. Hill, who got his license while he was still in high school, is

US Navy Explores Amateur Radio as a Training Adjunct

also the department's "innovation ambassador."

"I looked at the breakdown of current new hires and saw that many had degrees in computer science and thought that their classwork might not have covered things like RF propagation," Hill said. Rather than have employees sit through hours of PowerPoint briefings, Hill thought that a licensing course might be a more dynamic, hands-on approach to convey the basics—and cover areas such as directional antennas, signal propagation, and modulation that are necessary for their work.

Initially, Hill had 10 class slots funded, but then Ian Mann (KI6YVO), target design engineering branch head, got wind of the class, saw its potential, and helped get funding to expand participation. Mann, a General-class licensee and a ham for nearly 10 years, said he has been able to apply knowledge learned in the class to his NAWCWD work.

Some of the 23 students who recently passed Amateur Radio exams at the NAWCWD hold their Certificates of Successful Completion of Examination (CSCE).

Milton Gabaldon, target systems division head, also saw merit in the approach. He sat in on the classes, took the exam, and he is

now KM6YPA. For him, it was about connecting the dots.

“It's about introducing people to electronics, to start understanding what RF is all about … so when we talk about it in the test and evaluation world, [students] know what we're talking about," Gabaldon said. “They get a better view than just doing ‘software.’ Now they see ‘My software controls this piece, which sends out RF jamming signals that protect the warfighter.’ That's the most important takeaway."

In all, 23 employees who took the Technician exam passed. Several also successfully tested for General and Amateur Extra licenses. Hill hopes to offer more hands-on classes in the future, and he is planning a “fox hunt” for the near future as additional hands-on training.

REFERENCE “U.S. Navy Explore Amateur Radio as a Training Adjunct,” ARRL Letter Feb. 14, 2019.

Don't forget to register for the 2019 RCA Technical Symposium at: www.radioclubofamerica.org

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NEWS ITEM The January 2019 issue of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region 1 Monitoring System (IARUMS) Newsletter reported the Russian “Sunflower” coastal radar, located east of Vladivostok, is being heard at nights on 3,716 kilohertz (kHz) and 6,860 - 7,005 kHz, as well as on several 60-meter frequencies.

A Chinese wideband over-the-horizon (OTH) radar also appeared on 7,000 kHz in early January.

“Once again we have problems with short-wave radars,” said the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC) Monitoring System.

DARC is Germany’s IARU member

New Over-the-Horizon Voluntary Television Radars Standards Raising theTake Ire of Hold European Monitoring Systems

society. “The Russian coastal radar ‘Sunflower’ transmits on almost every evening at 5,310 - 5,410 kHz. As a result, our new mini-band is useless.” DARC was referring to the narrow worldwide allocation of 5,351.5 - 5,366.5 kHz to the Amateur Radio Service on a secondary basis by World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15). It said the interference appears as a deep hum. The Sunflower radar employs Frequency Modulation on Pulse (FMOP) at 43 sweeps per second to detect aircraft and, over water, vessels.

DARC continued, “The system is so successful that the Chinese operate several ‘sunflowers’ on the east coast. Chinese OTHs work almost daily in the 20-meter band. In the mornings, we can often receive them with high field strengths.” DARC said the Chinese OTHs cause worse interference than the Russian radars.

Russian coastal radar “Sunflower” on 80 m. TDoA bearing on 3,716 kHz on January 12, 2019.

Chinese wideband OTH radar appeared on 7,000 kHz on January 3, 2019.

DARC mentioned other OTH radars operating on 40 meters: “At the moment we have extreme problems with the ‘Container’ radar from Russia.” IARUMS often has reported problems from this radar.

In December 2018, IARUMS reported an OTH radar active on 21,170 kHz from the Sovereign Base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, a British Overseas Territory on the island of Cyprus.

While 60 meters and 80/75 meters are shared bands, the 7,000 - 7,200 kHz segment of 40 meters is allocated exclusively to the Amateur Radio Service worldwide. Some domestic amateur radio high-frequency (HF) allocations outside Region 2 (the Americas), such as 7,200 to 7,300 kHz, are shared with other services or are unavailable to radio amateurs.

On HF allocations such as 30 and 60 meters, Amateur Radio Service is secondary to other users. The 20-, 17-, 15-, 12-, and 10-meter bands are available exclusively to the Amateur Radio Service worldwide.

REFERENCE “Over-the-Horizon Radars Raising the Ire of European Monitoring Systems,” ARRL Letter, Feb. 19, 2019.

Waveform of a Chinese OTH radar on 7 MHz between 6,920 and 7,080 kHz.

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THE BOOK SHOP The following books have been suggested as interesting reading or as useful resources, and edited descriptions from the publishers are provided. These books have not been reviewed, and RCA is not advertising or endorsing the books or their authors. We welcome suggestions and recommendations from RCA’s members regarding your book suggestions to share with RCA’s membership. The scope can include technical, regulatory or other subjects. We encourage you to send your suggestions to David Bart at jbart1964@gmail.com for publication in a future issue of the Proceedings.

T actical Wireless Communications and Networks: Design Concepts and Challenges provides a complete description of modern tactical military communications and networks technology, this book systematically compares tactical military communications techniques with their commercial equivalents, pointing out similarities and differences.

In particular it examines each layer of the protocol stack and shows how specific tactical and security requirements result in changes from the commercial approach. The author systematically leads readers through this complex topic, firstly providing background on the architectural approach upon which the analysis will be based, and then going into detail on tactical wireless communications and networking technologies and techniques. Features include:

•

The Birth of Electric Traction was commissioned by Frank Sprague’s son and wife in the late 1950's. The son died in 1960 and the manuscript remained in a box.

Sprague’s nephew brought the manuscript to publication, added illustrations and a valuable appendix and has finally brought the story of Frank Sprague to life. The text tells the story of Frank Sprague, the times he lived in, the force of his will, and his competition and cooperation with Edison, Tesla and others whose creativity and entrepreneurship made the modern city possible.

systems which make railroads and mass transit work today are his. He was the first to design electric motors capable of earning their way in industry, and helped perfect the highspeed electric elevators that made skyscrapers possible. He created the basic circuitry that ran, and still runs, subways, elevators, and electrified railroads. Sprague was among the first men to bring rigorous mathematical discipline to replace cut-and-try research, making him the life-long rival of Thomas Edison. Sprague helped change electricity from a laboratory and lecture-platform oddity to a vital part of the modern world. Almost single-handedly he wired electricity into the second industrial revolution as a basic source of power and transportation.

Sprague was renowned in electrical circles around the world as “The Father of Electric Traction.” The control and safety

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• • • • •

Structured progressively: for readers needing an overall view; for those looking at the communications aspects (lower layers of the protocol stack); and for users interested in the networking aspects (higher layers of the protocol stack).

Presents approaches to alleviate the challenges faced by the engineers in the field today.

Furnished throughout with illustrations and case studies to clarify the notional and architectural approaches.

Includes a list of problems for each chapter to emphasize the important aspects of the topics covered.

Covers the current state of tactical networking as well as the future long-term evolution of tactical wireless communications and networking in the next 50 years.

Written at an advanced level with scope as a reference tool for engineers and scientists as well as a graduate text for advanced courses.

Tactical Wireless Communications and Networks: Design Concepts and Challenges. George F. Elmasry. Wiley, November 2012. ISBN: 978-1-119-95176-6. Hardcover, 324 pages.

The Birth of Electric Traction: the Extraordinary Life and Times of Inventor Frank Julian Sprague. Frank Rowsome (Author), John L. Sprague (Editor). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, February 18, 2014. ISBN-10: 1490955348. ISBN-13: 978-1490955346. Paperback, 386 pages.

BOOK REVIEW The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science by Cyrus C. M. Mody Reviewed by David Bart, RCA Fellow, Director, Life Member EDITOR’S NOTE: The following book has been suggested as interesting reading or as a useful resource. The following review does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by RCA. We welcome suggestions and recommendations from RCA’s members regarding books to share with RCA’s membership. The scope can include technical, regulatory, or other subjects. We encourage you to send your suggestions to David Bart at jbart1964@gmail.com for publication in a future issue of the Proceedings.

“M

oore's Law” refers to the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every 2 years. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and later a co-founder and CEO of Intel, first described his observations in a 1965 paper noting that the rate of change was annual. Later modifications settled on the 2-year approximation.

Numerous technical and other advances have continued the relationship. Moore's Law is an observation and projection of a historical trend, and, critically, it is not a physical or natural law.

Generally, the rate held steady from 1975 until roughly 2012, but the rate was faster in the first decade. More recently, in 2015, Intel stated that it believed the pace of advancement has slowed, and today, the pace is closer to 2.5 years. But, in 2017, Intel concluded that advances in hyper-scaling should help to continue the overall trend of Moore's Law and possibly increase the rate again. Debate continues about whether Moore’s Law is reaching an end or will continue. Debate also continues about whether Moore’s Law was self-perpetuating because it both observed and helped instigate the planned development and pacing for industry progress.

This is the jumping-off point that inspires the exploration of American science in Cyrus Mody’s new book, The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science. Mody notes that since the mid-1960s, American science has undergone significant changes in the way it is organized, funded, and practiced. These changes include the decline of basic research by corporations; a new orientation toward the short-term and commercial applications that has brought pressure on universities and government laboratories to participate in the market; and the promotion of inter-disciplinary activities.

Mody argues that the changes in American science beginning in the 1960s, previously dominated by

Cold War priorities and government/military funding, co-evolved with and were shaped by the needs of an emerging, “civilianized” U.S. semiconductor industry.

Mody views “Moore's Law” less as prediction than as self-fulfilling prophecy, pointing to the enormous investments of capital, people, and institutions the semiconductor industry required. He considers the “long arm” of Moore's Law that helped shape a new model for all of science.

Mody presents a series of case studies about microelectronics in six chapters and an epilogue that illustrates the reach of Moore's Law. He describes: • Stanford University's electrical engineers during the Vietnam era • IBM's exploration of alternatives to semiconductor technology •

the emergence of consortia and multidisciplinary centers that integrated research across diverse disciplines and universities in response to international global competition from Japan

• the development of Stanford and Cornell universities’ microfabrication centers •

the evolution of a new molecular electronics community with associated academic institutions, which inspired a new concept for organizing and structuring research programs.

Mody is professor and chair in the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He is the author of Instrumental Community: Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology (MIT Press, 2011). He has a M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University in the history of science and an A.B. from Harvard University in engineering. He has received numerous fellowships and awards. Mody was appointed as the editorin-chief of Engineering Studies in January 2018.

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He has specialized in the history of applied physical sciences in the U.S. since 1965. He focuses on the commercialization of academic research, countercultural science and engineering, and the duration of research and innovation.

Other reviews of Mody’s new book are still somewhat scarce.

• One reviewer noted: “Mody's book offers a wide range of important issues providing food for thought on the R&D behind our modern systems. Amid the different models of innovation, and approaches to technology management, civilianization was as pertinent to the advent of semiconductors as it is today.”

• Another stated: “Mody takes us inside Moore's Law to show us how progress in computing has been produced across decades through a complex intertwining of technological, government, academic, and corporate institutions. Evoking vivid stories of people and organizations, he uses the production and reproduction of Moore's Law as a lens into new understandings of the civilianization of computing and the reorganization of science in the U.S.” • A third stated: “This book undertakes an ambitious project—to frame the history of American scientific and engineering research in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries through the unlikely lens of microelectronics. The Long Arm of Moore's Law frames our understanding of the trajectories of American (and global) science across the Cold War and post-Cold War divide with a sweeping perspective. A joy to read.”

Mody views institutions as “social technologies,” distinct from but co-evolving with “physical technologies.”

Mody reveals the successes and failures of developing integrated circuits and microchips based on extensive archival research, interviews, published records, and the time he spent researching alongside nanotechnologists at Rice University in Texas. He brings out the reasons for growth, and the unprecedented, interdisciplinary collaboration between universities, manufacturers and government funding agencies during and after the Cold War. As the space race and arms race decelerated, a civilian microelectronics industry spawned in its place that reacted to increasing global competition that demanded building better chips faster. Thus, Moore’s Law became an intentional measuring device and coordinating mechanism.

Research groups formerly financed by the military looked to civilian agencies such as the National Science Foundation or the Environmental Protection Agency for funding. In turn, the agencies began developing their own applied research programs, and industry giants like Intel and IBM increasingly shared the huge financial burden of research with universities and national laboratories. As

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the development of innovative microchips became ever more complex and incredibly costly, other kinds of largescale hybrid partnerships were forged. These brought together industrial, governmental, and academic players into new consortia, shared R&D centers, and eventually meta-networks of organizations. Each increasingly outsourced the individual subcomponent processes and sub-technologies.

Moore’s Law both predicted and drove the exponential miniaturization of integrated circuits, and the related increase in computing power that could economically fit on a single chip. Mody approaches Moore’s Law as a “social fact” that is continually “enacted” by the grant officers and program managers who drive the R&D and see it applied in journals and conferences, or through laboratories, national working groups and industry networks. Fueled by the need for ever-greater computing power, and the desire to chase ever-smaller consumer goods, Moore’s Law becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that maintains, and which subjects, society to its engine.

Mody’s text moves between detailed and contextual themes. He discusses both individuals and institutions, noting their configurations, splintering, and regrouping.

For example, he describes IBM’s foray into circuits involving superconducting materials, the drying up of funding sources, and its subsequent exit as a key leader.

Mody shifts from nanoscale materials to macro-scale global economics and national security, exploring their linkages as driven by policymakers.

Mody explores different models of innovation and approaches to technology management. Here, the civilianization of the industry’s orientation was critical to the evolution of semiconductors. He explores the evolving relationship between the military, industry and academia at Stanford University as an example. The university successfully balanced the competing goals of a national security customer base with 1 set of priorities while simultaneously diffusing criticism about the military’s role, thereby winning over researchers interested in non-military applications. Stanford thus unified the best talent from both, bridging the mutual lack of trust and transparency, and encouraging the sharing of know-how, cooperation, and exchange between different kinds of people and organizations.

Successful institutional experiments at Cornell, MIT, Berkeley and Stanford nurtured and then embedded collaborations between industry and academia in other science and technology fields. The linking of stakeholders across time, distance, and institution, helped them to team up. The networking efforts of government agencies (security, defense, and civilian) thus proved vital in advancing microelectronics in the U.S. Strong competition leads to falling prices that reduce both costs and profit margins, so that only those companies with sufficient economies of scale can survive.

However, at the same time, the perceived threat of

global outside competition, such as the Japanese in the 1980s and 1990s, led to a series of national acts, which aimed to reduce the R&D costs for American companies enabling an increase in their competitiveness.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER David P. Bart, KB9YPD, is Chairman of the Radio Club of America Publications Committee and Editorial Director of the RCA Proceedings. He is a Life Member and Director of the Antique Wireless Association, and a Life Member, Director, and Fellow of RCA. He is also treasurer of the IEEE History Committee and vice president of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.

The Long Arm of Moore’s Law reflects on a technology that is conceived, discovered, developed, manufactured, consumed, and discarded.

Mody sees Moore’s Law as a prophecy that instigates changes, which are themselves motivated to prevent the ongoing threat of obsolescence. Critically, neither Moore's Law nor the history of American innovation has reached its limit.

I recommend the The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science. It offers a fascinating perspective on the evolution of American science and industrial R&D. The short epilogue is particularly interesting as the author summarizes why American science has changed since 1965 and describes the shadow cast by changes in the semiconductor industry. The writing is clear and brisk, and the themes are well explained.

The author stimulates thought on a wide range of important issues behind our modern systems by outlining a complex intertwining of technological, government, academic, and corporate institutions, as viewed through the lens of microelectronics, and by considering the changing rationales for conducting scientific research.

The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science. Cyrus C. M. Mody, ISBN-13: 978-0262035491.

Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 2017. Pages: 304; 6”x9.”

Dayton Hamvention 2019

ENJOY THE REWARDS OF

MEMBERSHIP IN CELEBRATION OF

NEW MEMBERS 50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

1959 RCA GOLDEN JUBILEE

CELEBRATION RECORDING

Join the Club for 3-years at a special rate: $ 150 65 years or older for 3-years at this rate: $ 100

WAIVED INITIATION FEES / DEADLINE IS MAY 19

NEW & RENEWING MEMBERS

All new or renewing RCA members who complete a 3-year or Lifetime membership application on or before June 30, 2019 receive a special gift—a fully restored recording of RCA’s 50th year Golden Jubilee celebration in 1959. In this recording you can hear the voices of many wireless luminaries including: W.E.D. Stokes, the first RCA Chairman Captain H.J. Rounds, Armstrong Medal winner, 1952

Paul Godley, an RCA member who traveled to Scotland to receive transmissions from the U.S. in the famous 1921 Transatlantic Tests

Walter Knoop, RCA’s President, 1959 Major E.H. Armstrong, Inventor of frequency modulation and the super heterodyne receiver

lso included A on this rare recording is Morse code (CW) sent during the Jubilee event by RCA Vice President Harry Hough on a 1909 spark gap transmitter.

Receive this commemorative recording as a free download when you join or renew your 3-year or Lifetime membership. This historic recording, originally on two LP records distributed to attendees at the Golden Jubilee celebration, was given to RCA by the daughter of a former RCA member. The LP recordings were remastered to digital by RCA member and former Director, Lou Manno.

Radio Club of America, 13570 Grove Drive, #302, Maple Grove, MN 55311

612.430.6995

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Special Anniversary Section

EDITOR’S NOTE: This issue of the Proceedings celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 in July 1969. We recognize the remarkable achievement of the first live television broadcasts from the moon.

This section includes five items touching on: • • • •

Major milestones in space exploration leading to Apollo 11 Upcoming special exhibits relating to Apollo 11 The state of communications in space in the mid-1960s Two articles about the Apollo 11 television system

We hope you enjoy this special issue and our commemoration of this historic communications success!

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MILESTONES IN SPACE EXPLORATION LEADING TO APOLLO 11 The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, man’s first steps on the moon, will be July 11, 2019. The following milestones recount some of the achievements that led to that historic accomplishment.

PRE 1957

1957–1958

11th Century China combines sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter (potassium nitrate) making gunpowder—first fuel used to propel early rockets in Chinese warfare.

October 4, 1957 USSR launches a modified R-7, 2-stage ICBM carrying the Sputnik 1 satellite.

July 4, 1054 Chinese astronomers observe the supernova in Taurus that formed the Crab Nebula.

Mid-1700s Hyder Ali (sultan of Mysome in India) begins manufacturing rockets sheathed in iron, not cardboard or paper, to improve their range and stability.

March 16, 1926 Robert Goddard ("father of modern rocketry”) launches first successful liquid-fueled rocket.

July 17, 1929 Goddard’s fourth launch in Auburn, Massachusetts, carries the first set of scientific tools (barometer and camera).

February 18, 1930 Pluto discovered by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

1933 Wernher von Braun begins German rocket research program— the A1 is the first rocket design in the Aggregat series.

November 11, 1935 Explorer II balloon takes 2 people to 22,066 meters (72,395 feet)—they observe and photograph the Earth’s curvature.

October 3, 1942 Germany successfully test launches the first ballistic missile (A4, commonly known as V-2) and later uses it in World War II. June 20, 1944 German V-2 rocket (MW 18014) becomes the first manmade object to cross Kármán line and is first spaceflight in history.

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November 3, 1957 USSR launches Sputnik 2 with first living passenger, the dog Laika.

December 6, 1957 A U.S. Vanguard TV-3 carrying a grapefruit-sized satellite explodes at launch.

January 31, 1958 U.S. launches Explorer 1 into orbit aboard a Juno rocket, the first satellite with an onboard telemetry system.

March 17, 1958 Vanguard 1 launches as 2nd US satellite—the first satellite with solar power; data leads to discovery of Van Allen radiation belt; today it is the oldest manmade object still in orbit.

October 1, 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) founded.

October 7, 1958 NASA administrator T. Keith Glennan publicly announces NASA's manned spaceflight program and formation of the Space Task Group, a panel of scientists and engineers from space-policy organizations absorbed by NASA.

1959 January 2, 1959 USSR launches Luna 1, which misses the moon but becomes the first artificial object to leave Earth orbit.

January 12, 1959 NASA awards McDonnell Corporation the contract to manufacture the Mercury capsules.

September 29, 1945 Wernher von Braun arrives at Fort Bliss, Texas, with 6 other German rocket specialists.

February 28, 1959 NASA launches Discover 1, the first U.S. spy satellite—it is not until the August 11, 1960, launch of Discover 13 that film is recovered successfully.

October 14, 1947 American test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks sound barrier in the X-1 (the Glamorous Glennis).

May 28, 1959 U.S. launches 1st primates in space (Able and Baker) on a suborbital flight.

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August 7, 1959 NASA's Explorer 6 launches and provides the first photographs of the Earth from space.

September 12, 1959 USSR’s launches Luna 2—2 days later it is intentionally crashed into the moon.

September 17, 1959 NASA's X-15 hypersonic research plane (capable of reaching Mach 6.7) makes the first powered flight.

1960–61 February 12, 1961 USSR launches Venera to Venus—the probe stops responding after 1 week.

April 12, 1961 USSR’s Yuri Gagarin becomes 1st man in space with 108-minute, 1-orbit flight on Vostok 1.

May 5, 1961 Mercury Freedom 7 launches on a Redstone rocket for 15-minute suborbital flight, making Alan Shepard the first American in space.

May 25, 1961 President John Kennedy announces before Congress that an American will land on the moon and be returned safely to Earth before the end of the decade.

October 27, 1961 Saturn 1 rocket (used for the initial Apollo missions) is tested for the first time.

1962–64 February 20, 1962 John Glenn makes 1st U.S. manned orbital flight aboard Mercury 6.

June 7, 1962 Wernher von Braun backs the idea of a Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mission.

July 10, 1962 US launches Telstar 1—enables trans-Atlantic transmission of television signals.

June 14, 1962 European Space Research Organization and the European Launcher Development Organization established—both eventually dissolved.

July 28, 1962 USSR launches its 1st successful spy satellite, designated Cosmos 7.

August 27, 1962 Mariner 2 launches and performs 1st successful interplanetary flyby when it passes by Venus.

September 29, 1962 Canada's Alouette 1 launches aboard a NASA Thor-Agena B rocket—1st satellite from a country other than the U.S. or USSR.

Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, egresses the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" and begins to descend the steps of the LM ladder as he prepares to walk on the moon. This photograph was taken by astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, commander, with a 70mm lunar surface camera during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Photo Credit: NASA. June 16, 1963 USSR’s Valentina Tereshkova becomes 1st woman to fly into space.

July 28, 1964 Ranger 7 launches—Ranger series' 1st success—takes photographs of moon until it crashes into its surface 4 days later.

April 8, 1964 Gemini 1, a 2-seat spacecraft system, launches an unmanned flight.

August 19, 1964 NASA's Syncom 3 launches aboard a Thor-Delta rocket— 1st geostationary telecommunications satellite.

October 12, 1964 USSR launches Voskhod 1, a modified Vostok orbiter with a 3-person crew.

1965–66 March 18, 1965 Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov makes the 1st spacewalk from the Voskhod 2 orbiter.

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March 23, 1965 Gemini 3, the first of the manned Gemini missions, launches with 2-person crew on a Titan 2 rocket—Gus Grissom is 1st man to travel in space twice.

June 2, 1966 Surveyor 1 lunar lander performs the 1st successful U.S. soft landing on the moon.

June 3, 1965 Ed White, during the Gemini 4 mission, becomes 1st American to walk in space.

1967–69

July 14, 1965 Mariner 4 executes the 1st successful Mars flyby.

Apollo 1 has cabin fire during launchpad test, killing all 3

January 27, 1967

August 21, 1965 Gemini 5 launches on an 8-day mission.

astronauts.

December 15, 1965 Gemini 6 launches and performs rendezvous with Gemini 7.

Apollo 1 review board issues damning report to NASA—

January 14, 1966 USSR’s chief designer, Sergei Korolev, dies from complications in routine surgery.

April 23, 1967

April 5, 1967 recommended modifications completed by October 9, 1968.

Soyuz 1 launches with many problems; Soviet cosmonaut

February 3, 1966 Unmanned USSR spacecraft Luna 9 makes the 1st soft landing on the moon.

Vladimir Komarov is killed during descent.

March 1, 1966 USSR’s Venera 3 probe becomes the 1st spacecraft to land on Venus , but the communications system fails.

Apollo 7 launches on a Saturn 1 rocket for an 11-day mission

March 16, 1966 Gemini 8 launches on a Titan 2 rocket and docks with previously launched Agena rocket—the 1st docking between 2 orbiting spacecraft.

April 3, 1966 USSR Luna 10 space probe enters lunar orbit—the 1st spacecraft to orbit the moon.

October 11, 1968 in Earth orbit—the 1st manned Apollo mission features 1st live TV broadcast of humans in space.

December 21, 1968 Apollo 8 launches on a Saturn V rocket—becomes the 1st manned mission to orbit the moon.

January 16, 1969 Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 rendezvous, dock and perform the 1st in-orbit crew transfer.

March 3, 1969 Apollo 9 launches—tests of the lunar module are conducted in Earth orbit.

May 22, 1969 Apollo 10's lunar module “Snoopy” comes within 8.6 miles (14 kilometers) of the moon's surface.

July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 crew (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) lands on the moon.

SOURCES Timeline: 50 Years of Spaceflight, This is the official crew portrait of the Apollo 11 astronauts. Pictured from left to right are: Neil A. Armstrong, Commander; Michael Collins, Module Pilot; Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot. Photo Credit: NASA.

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Space News, SPACE.com, Sep. 28, 2012; Timeline of Space Exploration, Wikipedia.

UPCOMING SPECIAL EXHIBITS RELATING TO THE APOLLO 11 ANNIVERSARY Numerous special exhibits are already planned, or will be announced, regarding the upcoming 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 in the summer of 2019. Here are a few to consider visiting this summer.

NASA NASA has many events planned.

Cradle of Aviation Museum Garden City, NY

Apollo Moon Fest will be held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Garden City, Long Island, NY, on July 20, 2019. The museum will have a number of events celebrating the anniversary of the lunar landings.

IEEE

Huntsville, AL IEEE Region 3 held its SoutheastCon Meeting in Huntsville on April 11-14, 2019 with a special emphasis on the Saturn and Apollo programs.

Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum New York, NY

The museum will host a special Astronomy Night celebrating the Apollo 11 anniversary on July 19, 2019.

Linda Hall Library Kansas City, MO

This rare books library specializes in the history of science. The “Science of Apollo” opened in March 2019.

Museum of Flight Seattle, WA

Major new “Space Race” exhibit opens May 20 about the American and Soviet race to the Moon in the 1960s. The exhibit is the first public display of the long-lost rocket engines that launched Apollo astronauts to the Moon. The engines were discovered and raised from the sea by Seattle-based Bezos Expeditions in 2013. The exhibit will also feature many other unique artifacts from the Space Race, including Moon rocks, a lunar roving "moon buggy," the only Viking Mars lander on Earth, space suits and the first Apollo spacecraft.

Museum of Science + Industry Chicago, IL

The Henry Crown Space Center hosts its permanent exhibit “Space is the Place” with the Apollo 8 module and Aurora 7 capsule, a replica of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing, and other artifacts.

Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum Yorba Linda, CA

“Apollo 11: One Giant Leap for Mankind” opened in April 2019 celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Historic Moon Landing. The all new interactive special exhibit runs through January 12, 2020.

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Purdue University West Lafayette, IN

An exhibition at Neil Armstrong's alma mater is offering the public a new look at the student and man who became the first moonwalker. "Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers" opened March 18 at Purdue University. The exhibit showcases select documents and objects from the school's research holdings.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Washington, DC

The museum holds approximately 17,000 space artifacts in its collection. More than 3,500 of those stem from the historic Apollo Moon landing effort, with 400 objects related specifically to the first successful lunar landing mission, Apollo 11.

A new permanent exhibit, “Destination Moon” will be opening in 2020. The exhibit is currently on tour (see Seattle). The new, state-of-the-art exhibition replaces the “Apollo to the Moon” gallery. It features many of the key artifacts in the old exhibition, as well as some now in other locations or in storage.

It places the Lunar missions in a broader cultural and political context than the previous exhibition.

“Moving Beyond Earth” is an immersive exhibition that places visitors “in orbit” in the shuttle and space-station era to explore recent human spaceflight and future possibilities. An expansive view of the Earth as viewed from the space station drifts over one gallery wall, while a fly-around tour of the International Space Station fills another wall.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum — Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Washington, DC

“Space Science” features the vehicles that travel into Earth's upper atmosphere or beyond and covers a broad range of disciplines. Topics include meteorology and geology, to lunar, solar, and planetary science, to astronomy and astrophysics, to the life sciences; especially objects flown in the atmosphere or in space such as balloons, sounding rockets, satellites, space probes, orbiters, landers), the scientific instruments they carried, and ground-based instruments.

“Applications Satellites” focuses on Earth-orbiting satellites.

“Human Spaceflight” traces the history of efforts to travel in space.

Fun fact!

A TI-83 calculator has six times more processing power than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon.

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COMMUNICATIONS ON THE MOON COURTESY RF CAFÉ Editor's Note: The following article appeared in the August 1969 Electronics World. It discusses the upcoming Apollo 11 moon landing and the anticipated television broadcasts from the moon. We reprint it herein to recall the level of worldwide expectancy and to juxtapose the related article about the Apollo 11 television broadcasts published elsewhere in this issue of the Proceedings. Recall that the world of 1969 was much different.

The public depended on summaries delivered through secondary media sources including television, radio, magazine, and newspaper. Real-time television news coverage was still in its infancy. Today, real-time information is available on the Internet for anyone with a network connection to access. This forward-looking August 1969 issue was actually released in July 1969, before Apollo 11 even launched (note the reference to the planned date of the 16th). Fortunately, the entire mission proceeded without a major incident, just as anticipated here.

W

hen men first walk on the Moon’s surface, they will be able to communicate by v.h.f. radio with each other and with the command module orbiting overhead. They will also be directly in touch with Earth by microwave radio and will be able to send back live television pictures over the vast translunar distance.

When Christopher Columbus sailed his way into history almost five centuries ago, he severed contact with civilization for the duration of his voyage. Except to the 90 sailors who manned the expedition, Columbus’ trials and triumphs, including his discovery of a new world, remained unrevealed until his return.

On July 16, if NASA plans proceed on schedule, a new breed of explorers will embark on a voyage that will rank them alongside Columbus in the annals of mankind’s great adventures. Yet, although their trip will traverse a distance 45 times that of Columbus’ route, they will not, except for short intervals, face isolation from the civilization they leave behind.

A stream of electronic signals will flow from the two Apollo 11 spaceships. Gathered in by a world-wide tracking network, they will be relayed instantly to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, where a cadre of mission controllers will be supporting astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Mike Collins as they fulfill man’s centuries-old desire to escape the confines of his native planet and alight upon another body in the Universe. A sharp contrast to the plight of Columbus, who had to do his own piloting and mission planning virtually alone.

Almost simultaneously as they are flashed before the NASA officials, the signals bearing in minute detail the progress of Apollo 11 will be broadcast internationally, allowing the entire world to share in the drama of the manned lunar landing.

The 7-lb TV camera that will send live TV pictures from Moon.

Apollo 11 will begin from Cape Kennedy when a Saturn 5 rocket, thundering aloft with 7.5 million pounds of thrust, drives the Apollo command / service

(CSM) and lunar (LM) modules, as well as its own third stage, into earth orbit. After less than two revolutions of the globe, during which the third stage and spacecraft systems will be checked out, the rocket will re-ignite to propel the astronauts on their way to a lunar touchdown.

Almost immediately after the translunar coast begins, the astronauts will separate their CSM from the third stage, turn it around, and dock with the LM. They will then extract LM from its adapter still attached to the rocket.

On the fourth day of the mission, as the CSM-LM combination swings around the Moon, the CSM service propulsion system engine will fire to brake the docked spacecraft’s speed and allow them to be captured in lunar orbit. A second engine burn later will circularize the orbit to approximately 60 nautical miles.

Then on the fifth day, astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin will transfer to LM from the CSM through the docking tunnel and power up the lander’s systems to check them out. Following the checkout, Armstrong and Aldrin will separate LM from the CSM and fire their descent engine to lower the LM orbit nearer the Moon. As they approach closer to the lunar surface, they will begin terminal descent during which they will fire the engine almost constantly, throttling its power to achieve a landing in helicopter fashion.

ON THE MOON’S SURFACE

The first order of business for Armstrong and Aldrin after the landing will be to check out the LM systems to make certain everything is ready for the lift-off that will return them to the CSM, piloted by Collins, in orbit around the Moon. That accomplished, they will don their portable life-support system backpacks, depressurize the LM, and open its door. Moments later, Armstrong will scale down the LM ladder and step onto the lunar surface.

Armstrong later will be joined by Aldrin outside the spaceship as they begin a modest exploration, staying within 50 to 100 feet of the LM. During this time about 2 hours, 40 minutes of the total 22-hour lunar stay will be spent outside the spacecraft - the astronauts will stay in touch with one another, and with mission controllers on Earth, using a compact extra-vehicular communications system (EVCS) built by RCA. www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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The teaming of v.h.f. and u.h.f. S-band is characteristic of the entire Apollo communications scheme, which must link two spacecraft to Earth and to each other, and also make provision for astronauts exploring the Moon.

S-band carriers are used for spacecraft-to-Earth links for both LM and CSM, and v.h.f. will be employed for communications between the two spaceships and for extra-vehicular activity on the Moon.

In all cases, the S-band and v.h.f. can be converted to one another, providing a number of communications paths to assure that everyone - the CSM, LM, and Earth remains in contact.

AN UMBRELLA ANTENNA Astronauts on Moon will use v.h.f. radio to communicate with each other and S-band for Earth communications.

The EVCS consists of a v.h.f. transceiver set in each astronaut’s backpack. Although each measures only 14” x 6” x 1 1/4” and weighs only 6.5 pounds, it contains two AM receivers, two AM transmitters, either an FM transmitter or an FM receiver, plus telemetry instrumentation to transmit astronaut biomedical data and status of the spacesuit systems.

Use of an FM receiver in one EVCS unit and the FM transmitter in the other will allow the receiver-equipped extra-vehicular astronaut (EVA) to serve as a radio-relay point for voice and data between his partner and the LM. This arrangement has one EVA transmit via FM (279 MHz) to the second, which converts the transmission to AM (259.7 or 296.8 MHz) for relay to the LM communications systems. Both astronauts can also transmit directly to LM via AM. The LM, in turn, will convert the v.h.f. voice and data transmissions to u.h.f. S-band microwave signals and transmit them to Earth on a carrier frequency of 2282.5 MHz.

The u.h.f. transmissions to and from the Moon once LM lands can be conducted via a remarkable antenna.

Called the “S-band erectable antenna,” it is stored as a cylinder only 10 inches in diameter and 39 inches long. After the landing, one of the astronauts can remove the cylinder from the LM, set up its tripod, extend the telescoping feed, attach a cable from LM, and “pop” the antenna much like an umbrella so that it blossoms into a dish 10 feet in diameter. Total weight of the entire antenna is 14 pounds.

For Apollo 11 the erectable antenna will serve as a contingency item, although it is slated for prime use in future lunar landings.

The erectable antenna has 32-dB gain, about 12 dB more than the 26-inch steerable dish on the LM which will handle S-band transmission and reception when the spacecraft is in flight and after it lands. The erectable antenna focuses its energy so that its transmissions will cover the entire portion of the Earth facing the Moon at any given time.

Stretched between the antenna’s ribs, which are jointed with watch-spring metal so they can be folded, is an ultra-fine gold-plated wire woven into material resembling ladies’ mesh stockings. The total result is a very flexible assembly that springs into a rigid structure when its opening mechanism is activated.

LIVE TV FROM THE MOON

The most spectacular transmissions emanating from the lunar surface will be live TV beamed to an international audience by a 7-pound camera built by Westinghouse.

The small camera will provide spectacular views of the astronauts as they move about on the lunar-scape to gather rock and soil samples and to set up scientific instruments.

The erectable 5-band antenna that will send microwave signals from the Moon to Earth is going through simulated lunar setup.

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The pictures will be received on Earth, scan-converted, and released to the commercial networks for broadcast to home TV sets. Scan conversion of the signals is needed because the TV camera, to conserve power and communications bandwidth, operates on standards markedly different from commercial TV.

The three steps required to set up the erectable 5-band antenna. At left, the feed is being extended; at center, the tripod has been set up and cover removed; at right, fully deployed antenna.

Instead of the 525-line TV pictures broadcast at 30 frames-per-second of conventional TV, the camera transmits 320-line TV pictures at 10 frames-per-second.

This enables it to operate on a 500-kHz bandwidth as contrasted to 4.5 MHz for commercial TV. The camera also operates in a second mode, sending high-resolution “still” pictures of 1280 lines at one frame each 1.6 seconds.

In either case, the Earth-based scan converters, built

by RCA, through a virtually instantaneous recordingplayback process, transform the Apollo camera pictures to commercial standards so they can be displayed on conventional sets. Each converter employs a TV monitor, a vidicon camera, a video recorder similar to the “instant replay” devices used in sports telecasts, and pulse and timing units.

The lunar-surface camera is one of two that will be used for Apollo 11. A larger Westinghouse color camera identical to the one carried on Apollo 10 will fly in the CSM to broadcast TV during the trips to and from the Moon and perhaps while the CSM maintains its vigil in lunar orbit after the landing and during the exploration.

Both cameras already have made their space debuts.

The amazing detail they provided of the astronauts at work, the Earth and Moon, and the spaceships in orbit spellbound TV viewers everywhere.

As spectacular as it will be, however, the TV will be only a small part of the total information that will be showered on Earth by the LM communications systems during the lunar visit. Vital astronaut physiological functions such as heart rate and temperature, telemetry on the spacecraft systems, voice conversations, and status of EVA spacesuit conditions (such as temperatures and oxygen supply), as well as the TV, will all ride to

Earth simultaneously on the S-band carrier, producing thousands of bits of data each second.

RANGING DATA & NAVIGATION

When the astronauts return to the LM and fire its ascent engine to climb back into lunar orbit and rejoin the CSM there, the LM communications system will take on an additional chore: receiving and retransmitting ranging signals from Earth. The range interrogations, like command and voice signals, will be received on 2101.8 MHz. They will then be turned around and transmitted on 2282.5 MHz, the carrier for all LM S-band transmissions.

As LM ascends, its v.h.f. set will be in action linking it with the CSM it is seeking. In addition to handling voice and low-bit-rate data, the v.h.f. radio will allow the CSM to compute distance between it and the LM. It does this by transmitting a series of tones, which are received and retransmitted by the LM. By measuring the time between transmission of the tones and receipt of the returns, the CSM-to-LM range can be calculated. The voice and the ranging functions can be performed simultaneously. This is the first v.h.f. system ever created with this capability.

The primary source of range data between the LM and CSM when they are separated in space, however, will come from a silent communicator - the LM rendezvous radar built by RCA. The X-band instrument, the first gimballing radar ever flown in space, will track a transponder in the CSM to produce information on velocity and direction of the CSM relative to the LM, as well as distance between the two.

The radar and v.h.f. communications thus give Apollo 11 dual sources of information that will enable the LM to fly its way back to the CSM. The critical nature of the

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The CSM’s counterpart communications system, although the design of some equipment items are different, is a functional duplicate of the LM S-band and v.h.f. radio. With the LM system, it forms one-half of the Apollo communications complex.

The second half is the Earth-based Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Strung around the globe are S-band receiving sites whose 30-foot and 85-foot antennas will peer spaceward throughout the Apollo 11 mission to receive the CSM and LM transmissions from the air, and to send voice and data to the spaceships. The stations are referred to as unified S-band sites since one antenna and one system handles all the communications functions; TV, voice, telemetry, and tracking.

Besides the sites based on land across the United States and in several foreign countries, Apollo receiving stations also ply the seas and the air in specially designed ships and converted jet aircraft. The ships and aircraft fill the gaps and provide coverage where no land stations can be situated.

An opened extra vehicular communications system radio similar to the ones used by our astronauts is being tested here.

rendezvous and docking is underscored by the fact that LM is solely a spaceship that cannot re-enter Earth’s atmosphere without being destroyed by the stresses of gravity and atmospheric friction. LM must rejoin the CSM after the lunar landing so that Armstrong and Aldrin can return safely to Earth with Collins.

The creation of the Apollo LM communications system has dipped deeply into the reservoir of America’s electronic technology and experience. Although the systems design management task was performed by RCA’s Defense Communications Systems Division in Camden, N.J., LM communications equipment builders read like an electronics “Who’s Who:” Collins Radio for the S-band signal processor, Motorola for the S-band transceivers, Raytheon for the S-band power amplifier; and Dalmo-Victor for the S-band steerable antenna. RCA at Camden built the v.h.f. sets as well as the extravehicular radios, and its sister unit in Moorestown, N.J. developed the unique erectable antenna.

Except for the antennas, which serve as back up to one another, each item of LM communications equipment is redundant, providing an alternate means of accomplishing its task if the prime unit fails. Solid-state design and construction, except for an amplitron tube in the S-band power amplifier, are employed throughout the system.

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Tying all these stations together is the NASCOM network, a system of radio, satellite, and land-line communications that has the complex task of keeping the network linked together so that the Apollo voice, data, and TV will flow uninterrupted to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

It is paradoxical that despite the capability of the Apollo spacecraft communications systems, and the huge complex on the ground, critical phases of the flight can occur when communications between the spacecraft and Earth are impossible. For example, the engine firing that will drive the CSM out of lunar orbit so the astronauts can return home will take place when the spacecraft is on the backside of the Moon and communications signals are blocked from Earth. Thus, as was the case in the Apollo 8 and 10 lunar missions, the world will have to wait until the spaceship swings around the lunar horizon to learn the success of the maneuver.

However, the first step onto the Moon by an American will be in clear sight of the Earth, electronically. When the moment comes, it will be remembered as long as civilization survives; the achievement alone is enough to assure that. Yet, the impact and accomplishment of the manned lunar landing surely will be felt more sharply on Earth because of the electronic beams that will span the void of space to bond Apollo 11 and astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to their native planet.

REFERENCE

RF Café (Electronics World, August 1969) http://www. rfcafe.com/references/electronics-world/communicationsmoon-electronics-world-august-1969.htm.

COMMUNICATIONS TO THE MOON AND PLANETS

BY DR. EBERHARDT RECHTIN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE DEEP SPACE INSTRUMENTATION FACILITY JET PROPULSION LABORATORY, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA The following reprint of the 56th Annual Banquet Address at the Radio Club of America by Dr. Eberhardt Rechtin, Assistant Director of the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory appeared in the April 1966 issue of the Proceedings. It offers a historical perspective on the state of space communications in the mid-1960s just prior to the upcoming Apollo effort to reach the moon.

I

want to tell you something tonight about space technology before it becomes obsolete. Our technology goes dramatically from five-inch headlines to half an inch on the front page; only very shortly thereafter, it is down to a quarter of an inch on page ten. Not long after that stage, we are pleased to get a short statement once in a 'while in a back section of the paper.

Another measure of how rapidly our position dwindles in the public eye is the response of technical magazines to contributions dealing with our projects. When we first start out getting attention, the technical publications are hungry for any contributions about our project from any reference. It isn't long before they limit their acceptances to submissions from the highest and most reputable authority concerned with the project but even that phase does not last for too long. Thereafter, acceptance depends upon the decision of a special papers review committee. Finally, we count our­selves fortunate to be remembered in an annual survey of the whole field.

Perhaps the best index I have found is the way my daughters are treated in elementary school. Their presence in the student body inevitably led to my giving talks at their school to the engineers of the future.

Space projects interest people of all ages but the kids in an elementary school can and do ask more intelligent questions than their parents. They understand more, they see more, they appreciate more, and they look at fundamentals. For example, "What keeps the Echo balloon up?" was put to me by a very young elementary school student on one of my first ventures into the elementary school area.

For awhile after the initial dramatic phase of the project, the kids are heroes at school. As the novelty of the project wears off, they are what may be described as well respected. Finally, your kids are just kids. We are at that desirable stage now, as far as deep space projects are concerned.

SPACE TRAVEL BECOMES RESPECTABLE

I can remember ten years ago, when we talked about the practical engineering aspects of communication to the moon and to the planets, we could do so only with members of research groups actively working on space

projects. The Defense Department even issued advice to keep space discussions among ourselves because space travel was not yet accepted as a sensible and plausible proposition by the general public.

Five years ago, when we had several satellites up and communication with them was already old hat, our data rate was not very high - eight bits per second or so.

But the literature then was still full of statements that enormous powers and huge antennas would be needed aboard spacecraft for communications from the planets to earth.

By about three years ago, we demonstrated spacecraft with quite useful data rates transmitting from the area of the planet Venus, 50,000,000 miles away. We delivered all kinds of scientific information over that distance at about ten bits per second, which, only two years previous, was about the best we could do from the nearby moon. Then, about eight months ago, we sent live television pictures from the moon and broadcast them to the American public over its TV networks. The frame rate was about one picture per second and the home reproduction was quite acceptable.

About four months ago, we sent good quality facsimile pictures back from the planet Mars at a data rate of about ten bits per second, which serves as a useful lowest limit. The Mars pictures were sent at a distance of 100,000,000 miles. You will see some of these pictures tonight.

We can foresee television feeding directly into our TV networks from the moon with standard American broadcast quality within ten years and we may be able to do a great deal better than that. By that time, we shall be able to get five kilobits per scan from Mars, good enough for sending good facsimile pictures continuously for high grade continuous surveillance of the planet at distances up to 250, 000, 000 miles, which is its maximum distance from earth at the far side of the sun.

OUTER SPACE COMMUNICATIONS AND NAVIGATION

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to put our spacecraft where we wish. When we started out, we considered our ICBM accuracies quite good.

Radio guidance systems which would put down an ICBM within a mile of the target at 5, 000 miles were regarded as extremely precise with a performance of one part in 5,000.

About three years ago, we put a spacecraft within 500 miles of the aiming point at 35, 000, 000 miles. Two years ago, we put a spacecraft on the moon within a few miles of the target at a distance of 240,000 miles. On the planet Mars, we came within a few hundred miles of the target point at 100,000,000 miles.

To put it in another way, our guidance techniques have gone from about one part in 5,000 to one. part in 100,000. We are now about to do one part in a million.

In the next decade, we can expect this to be routine.

This will enable us to go accurately to Mars and when we are there, to control an orbit around the planet with great precision continuously from stations here on earth. We will be able to alter their orbit to put our probes wherever we wish.

SUCCESSFUL TECHNIQUES ARE SIMPLE

A curious thing about this whole space development is that now that we have learned how to do it, the techniques employed look remarkably simple.

We sometimes wonder where all the controversy came from along the way. This is probably the classic record of most developments; once you know the answer and demonstrate it, most people can say the solution found is quite straightforward and obvious.

We have learned two fundamental theorems from pioneering in space, two principles that have stayed firmly with us. The first one is that before the flight, the results are unexpected. The second is that after the flight, the result is obvious.

These two precise engineering theorems can be ignored by designers only at their very great peril. They tell us obviously how to build a space telemetry systems. The results must be unexpected before you put the system into use.

Applied to spacecraft design, the first theorem can be carried to great lengths in defining the tolerances and specifications of what to expect, the uncertainties to be encountered and the dire undefined problems that must be faced. You must also be prepared to face the application of the second theorem after you have demonstrated the success of your project, the fact that all the non­participating experts will say everything was obvious all along.

You must not be discouraged when you successfully place a spacecraft in the vicinity of Mars and transmit and produce pictures showing what Mars really looks like, that the armchair experts will say that we told you that it was going to be that way; we all knew it was going

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to be that way and all the trouble you went to was hardly worth the effort.

We could write a script for an imaginary project from beginning to end, complete with what everyone will say at each stage. It would be a pleasure to watch this being played out in the real world, step by step, as it goes along with an actual project.

It is amazing how many people said that the Van Allen belts were really obvious and that craters on the surface of Mars were of course to be expected.

RELIABILITY ON DEEP SPACE PROJECTS

In space technology, we have been most fortunate to have faced the minimum number of false starts. There have been a minimum number of errors in conceptual design and in the basic systems concepts. The communications have fortunately proved very reliable.

We have yet to have a significant failure with the moon probes and with planetary space probes. Because of this, we have been able to tell what happens with the rest of the spacecraft system.

A really good criterion for a space communication system design proposes that the communication system must work even after everything else has conked out. You will see that theorem illustrated tonight in a variety of ways. Our fortunes have been far better than those of our notably less successful competition. We will now show you slides of photographs made and transmitted from space which demonstrate, in a way, the answers in the back of the book of space exploration problems. I will not go into detail of how we made these pictures—the methods used are fairly straightforward. (Laughter).

However, it is good to see what happened.

THE FIRST LUNAR PROBE

The first lunar probe stood one' foot high and weighed eleven pounds. The total weight allowed for communications equipment was one pound. It was launched back in 1960. We thought that probe was something. It was truly a probe since it sent back ten bits of information per second. It did not get very close to the moon, unfortunately; its closest approach was about 25; 000 miles away from it. Consequently, we did not learn much more than how to begin.

The guidance system consisted of spinning weights. That was the Pioneer probe, the first one that ever flew. It was not such a remarkable achievement, but it will serve to show how fast Space technology has progressed from its pioneering beginning.

The antenna installation used to receive the signals radiated by the Pioneer satellite was taken wholesale from the radio astronomers, who had been building large and reasonably precise structures. The dish was 85 feet across. The mount de­sign was based on astronomical requirements. It is an equatorial or polar mount, quite convenient for space probes, where probes look more

like stars than rapidly moving objects in the sky, such as earth satellites or missiles.

antenna gain on the stabilized spacecraft can easily be 20 or 30 DB. The amount of power that can be gathered by the large solar panels, which stretch fifteen feet from wing tip to wing tip, is considerably greater than the- half pound of batteries that we had on the first moon shot.

Fig. 1 - The Mariner Mars outer space probe of 1964, showing the principal components.

LATER SPACE PROBES The Mariner Mars probe, shown in Figure 1, indicates where we stand today and illustrates many of the components used in current space technology in a more or less standard way. The large wing-like things are solar cell panels. They produce several hundred watts of power from the sun, which is stored and used in the hexagonal center section of the structure. The strange looking post on the top is the low gain antenna. It is a truncated parabola.

The flat shaped sails on the outside are an interesting addition to the guidance and control system. Sunlight exerts pressure on any device in space, where there, are very few other influences. This pressure of light is sufficient to up­set the spacecraft if the center of gravity is not exactly right. These sails literally sail the craft through space. The little sails move as the sunlight comes in, thereby correcting any small imbalances in the system and they keep the spacecraft pointing into the wind, so to speak. The forces are extremely small but if allowed to keep pushing the spacecraft off center for any length of time, would upset it. The sails contribute materially to space flight stability.

The illustration also shows the Canopus tracker. The camera mounted in the spacecraft took pictures of Mars as it went by and sent them back to earth, transmitting through the high gain antenna. The transmitter had a power level of ten watts continuous.

The spacecraft is completely stabilized. One stabilization system keeps one axis pointed toward the sun and thus holds the solar panels properly oriented to generate the maximum power from the sun.

The other stabilization axis is pointed at a star roughly out of the plane of ecliptics so that we have what amounts to an orthagonal reference system.

The spacecraft depends upon its sensing system to maintain its stabilization. This activates small gas jets, the pitch jet and the yaw jet. These jets are very small with very little gas in them, a total of about 10 pounds, which is enough to last for four years in space.

These jets occasionally squirt small jets of gas, about once every half hour. This is sufficient to keep the spacecraft stabilized to about one half. a degree at all times on the two different axes.

The spacecraft is thus locked, if you will, to the sun and to a star.

The fact that it is so stabilized means that the high gain antenna on it is a practical communication tool which may be accurately beamed toward the earth.

The little Pioneer, which I showed you previously, was simply a spinning device. The gain achieved by the antenna was very small, in the order of 5 or 6 DB. The

Fig. 2 - Deep Space Instrumentation facilities are distributed longitudinally around the world to maintain continuous contact with space probes.

This spacecraft represents an abrupt jump from the very simple small device to a completely stabilized machine within a very few years. I use the word machine in its true sense because this spacecraft accomplishes its tasks automatically in response to commands sent to it from the earth.

The next illustration shows one of the more important facets of doing business in deep space.

DSIF stands for Deep Space Instrumentation Facility.

The installations shown are Goldstone, Cal., Cape Kennedy, Fla., Madrid, Spain, Johannesburg, South Africa, Woomera and Canberra in Australia. These

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stations are so located that a spacecraft, once out of the immediate vicinity of the earth, can be kept in quite continuous contact.

IMPORTANCE OF CONTINUOUS OPERATION

Continuous space probe operation has turned out to be quite important, far more important than we originally believed. When the spacecraft is completely stabilized, it receives solar energy continuously, converts the solar energy into electricity, transmits information continuously at the same power level, employs a guidance and·control system that operates in the same sustained fashion. The output of the spacecraft is accumulated on the earth by a set of stations that must maintain continuous contact with the spacecraft throughout its mission. This continuous operation turns out to be the most important factor in maintaining the reliability of the entire system.

of failures versus operating time, there is a strong correlation with such events as filling the rocket with liquid oxygen, sudden temperature changes, sudden mechanical changes and the frequency of failure.

In a spacecraft environment, suddenly changing its thermal environment from one of simple tumbling to one of being kept in a fixed position relative to the sun, is a material first order contribution to reliability of performance. This is a difficult proposition to prove analytically but it does turn out that reliance on a continuous trans­mission and a continuous operation of all functions of the spacecraft is a very strong ingredient toward the success of the spacecraft that have gone to the moon and particularly those that have journeyed to the planets.

Figure 3 shows a modern and permanent station, the Echo station at Goldstone, California.

When you consider that the Mars mission had to fly for nine months in a hostile environment with no chance of repair, that it then worked perfectly at the end point, transmitting all of its pictures and that it did everything else we asked of it, you have successfully confronted a very severe reliability problem in the basic design of the whole system.

There are. two ways in which the reliability problem could have been faced. We considered both approaches originally and, after extensive study, decided upon one of them. In this selection, we were indeed-quite fortunate because the discarded approach does not work. The one we selected does.

The reason that it works depends upon an important theorem in reliability: if something is working, don't fix it. Or to put it in another way, if a thing is working, it will probably continue to work. And again, don't change anything in good operating condition.

In a spacecraft on a prolonged mission, continuously stabilized for operating in a relatively stable environment, nothing much is happening. So the electrons keep busily about their work be­cause there isn't much going on that might disrupt things.

The other approach to reliability is based on the proposition that shelf life in electronics is very much longer than operating life. This makes it logical to allow the spacecraft to go to sleep for most of the time and put its system to work only intermittently. This makes it operate under shelf life conditions for most of the time; it is called up into action when you need it for as short a period of activity as possible. You then need only one ground station to talk to providing you time the operations to periods when it is within range of the receiving station. The whole system is then de­signed for minimum operating time at conveniently spaced intervals and for maximum operation on a shelf life basis.

This is the technique the Russians used, and it is the one that does not work. When you look at a plot 68

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Fig. 3 - The Echo station, located at Gold­stone in the California desert.

The antenna is the familiar 85-foot dish. This is typical of the stations we have 'around the world. It is in the desert, a most convenient place for an activity like this. Many of our stations are located in desert country because no one wants to live there. This makes it very quiet in the radio frequency sense so that we can successfully operate high sensitivity stations.

Figure 4 shows our progress graphically to 1961 and projections out to 1970. The upper curve is a figure of performance based on the signal to noise ratio which we can achieve in a one cycle band. We have attained

names and their questions are not given because the, microphone on the speaker's table was out of range.

METEORITES

Meteorites are a real danger to spacecraft. Most of the dust and debris that a spacecraft encounters is at a close proximity to the earth. We are not quite sure why this is so. A theory frequently advanced is that the earth gathers the de­bris in its journey through the solar system. It then goes into orbit around the earth and then slowly disintegrates and falls to the earth's sur­face.

As we go further out, the density is very much lower, but it is still significant.

Fig. 4 - Present and projected deep space instrumentation facilities and their capabilities.

a factor of 10 to the fifth power for about 2, 000 hours so far and there is as yet no sign of reduction in our rate of progress.

We are going to digital format not particularly because of its communication efficiency but be­cause of the problems of storage and computation. We are simply deluged with data. When we say deluged with data, our friends at the Godard Space Center are inclined to laugh. What do you mean by deluged? You are getting eight bits per second from outer space. We are getting 200,000,000 bits per day. We have warehouses of tape requiring analysis.

The balance of Dr. Rechtin' s splendid address was devoted to the showing of slides, some of which are shown here as Figures 5, 6, 7 and 8. Following the slides, Dr. Rechtin fielded a large number of questions, a few of which have been abstracted below. Speaker's

When we went out to Venus, the spacecraft was quite severely hit several times. That particular spacecraft was an early one and it had typical early electronic problems. For a time, it caused us considerable anxiety.

The signal received on the earth sensor was erratic. For a time, it looked as if we would be unable to accomplish the mission.

You know how we solve that kind of problem on earth.

We kick the thing. We could hardly manage that under the circumstances, but outer space found a way for us.

Along came a rock.

It smashed into one of the solar panels and disrupted everything on the space probe. All the power systems were joggled; everything happened at once. Then the spacecraft's communications came back on the air and worked perfectly from then on.

Fig. 6 - Composite Ranger moon map, showing size of a single frame.

DUST

Fig. 5 - The Ranger moon probe, which obtained numerous revealing close-up pictures of the moon.

We are seriously concerned with the outer space dust problem. If we planned to take the dust cap off the camera lens early in the flight, bombardment by dust, the effect of cosmic rays and whatever else to which the lens would be exposed, might seriously degrade the

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Fig. 7 - A revealing picture of the sur­face of Mars, showing a similarity with moon surface features.

pictures. There was no experience on which to base the best possible trade-off between early and last-minute removal of the lens cover. We did not know whether or not we would have serious attitude disturbances near the planet which might not be correctable because of the time lag in controlling the spacecraft at such great distances. With close timing of lens cap removal just prior to picture taking, we would run the risk of having our camera inoperative because of attitude problems, at the very moment that we might otherwise be able to get our best possible pictures.

The only proof that we picked the right moment to remove the lens cap is the fact that we came out all right. We analyzed the received pictures for graininess due to dust on the lens. Re­member that we were measuring micro-meteorite intensity all through the flight. We simulated the effect of the observed dust in the laboratory; the results caused us continuous concern. Everyone to the director of the laboratory sat in, pondering the problem. We finally made the decision to take off the lens cap in mid-flight because we had so many other problems, such as the possibility that dust specks might affect the attitude controls, etc. We traded off the risks in removing the lens cap earlier to leave us free to concentrate on many other questions requiring last minute solutions.

STABILIZATION SAILS

The sails were experimental, and we did not know how effectively they would function in deep space. Hence, we provided the gas jets to permit remote navigation

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Fig. 8 - Deep space tracking radar with 210-foot dish now nearing completion.

of the spacecraft. If the sails could stabilize the craft without the aid of the gas jets, no net expenditure of power would have been required other than that used to control the position of the sails. It turned out that one of the sails had to be positioned at the limit. This can be corrected in future designs. The effect of the sails was to increase the potential life of the gas system from one to four years of operation.

In the future, with careful design to attain accurate weight balance of the spacecraft, it should be possible to achieve attitude stabilization at least in the free fall mode, relying on the sails alone. The problem is quite different when we are turning on a rocket motor, for example. But this affects a small interplanetary spacecraft for only a few minutes out of a total space flight.

Marked by a great speech by an outstanding space scientist and by the award of the coveted Armstrong Medal to one of our most popular and faithful members, the 56th Annual Radio Club Banquet at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York on November 19, 1965, will long be remembered in the annals of the Club.

Our president, Jerry B. Minter, extended the Club's greetings to members and their guests, Frank Shepard acted as a genial Master of Ceremonies, John H. Bose made the award and read the Citation for the Armstrong Medal to Ernest V. Amy, quoted in full below.

Introduced by Frank Shepard, Dr. Eberhardt Rechtin, Assistant Director of the Deep Space Instrumentation

Facility of the Jet Propulsion Lab­oratory, delivered the address of the evening, dealing with communications to the moon and the planets. It proved to be a pleasant mixture of authoritative scientific information, philosophy and humor, a compellingly interesting presentation on the practical aspects of deep space navigation and telemetry. The address is abstracted in a separate article, taken from a tape recording made of Dr. Rechtin's speech.

Dr. Rechtin appeared through the good offices of Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Ad­ministration, a position to which he was promoted from that of Associate Administrator, during the course of the negotiations with your Editor, acting as a member of the Banquet Committee.

Dr. Eberhardt Rechtin, Assistant Director of the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility of the Jet Pro­pulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, addressing the 56th Annual Banquet of the Radio Club.

The 1965 Banquet Committee worked under the chairmanship of Wilson Aull and included members Amy, Batcher, Felix, Houck, McMann, Sr., and Minter.

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AWA ANNUAL CONVENTION AUGUST 13 - 17, 2019 __________________________________________________________________________________

The AWA Annual Convention is four and a half days of Fellowship, Fun and Education. This is an opportunity to find that special treasure you have been looking for.

Announcements will be forthcoming. Watch the website!

Enjoy a full 4 1/2 Day Schedule: Tuesday evening – Saturday Dual Themes: “Evolution of the Loudspeaker” & “Audio Brands.”

Approximately 18 Presentations Outdoor Vintage Electronics Flea Market, Book Sale, and Saturday Auction The World Famous Antique Wireless Museum will be open Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon during the Convention

Wear it on its own, or add Life Member, Senior Member, or Fellow bars to reflect your unique membership distinctions.

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Dayton Hamvention 2019

ENJOY THE REWARDS OF

MEMBERSHIP IN CELEBRATION OF

NEW MEMBERS 50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

1959 RCA GOLDEN JUBILEE

CELEBRATION RECORDING

Join the Club for 3-years at a special rate: $ 150 65 years or older for 3-years at this rate: $ 100

WAIVED INITIATION FEES / DEADLINE IS MAY 19

NEW & RENEWING MEMBERS

All new or renewing RCA members who complete a 3-year or Lifetime membership application on or before June 30, 2019 receive a special gift—a fully restored recording of RCA’s 50th year Golden Jubilee celebration in 1959. In this recording you can hear the voices of many wireless luminaries including: W.E.D. Stokes, the first RCA Chairman Captain H.J. Rounds, Armstrong Medal winner, 1952

Paul Godley, an RCA member who traveled to Scotland to receive transmissions from the U.S. in the famous 1921 Transatlantic Tests

Walter Knoop, RCA’s President, 1959 Major E.H. Armstrong, Inventor of frequency modulation and the super heterodyne receiver

lso included A on this rare recording is Morse code (CW) sent during the Jubilee event by RCA Vice President Harry Hough on a 1909 spark gap transmitter.

Receive this commemorative recording as a free download when you join or renew your 3-year or Lifetime membership. This historic recording, originally on two LP records distributed to attendees at the Golden Jubilee celebration, was given to RCA by the daughter of a former RCA member. The LP recordings were remastered to digital by RCA member and former Director, Lou Manno.

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APOLLO TELEVISION

By Bill Wood, former Apollo MSFN station engineer Editor's Note: The following reprint was submitted By Bill Wood, former Apollo MSFN station engineer, for the benefit of RCA's members.

The original paper was published in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, copyright 2005, available at https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/main.html.

Note, some of the images in this article do not have captions.

B

ack in 1962 the early planning for the Apollo project called for a new communication concept in which all voice, telemetry, television, and ranging information for near-earth and lunar distances would be transmitted over a single frequency system. This system, called Unified S-Band (USB), specified that voice and biomedical data would be carried on a 1.25 MHz FM subcarrier, telemetry data on a 1.024 MHz bi-phase modulated subcarrier, and that a pseudo-random ranging code would use a common phase-modulated S-band downlink frequency. These were 2287.5 MHz for the Command and Service Module and 2282.5 MHz for the Lunar Module.

Lunar Module S-Band Block Diagram

To accommodate television on the single Lunar Module downlink, the ranging code was removed and the modulation changed from Phase to Frequency Modulation. This left 700 kHz of clear bandwidth available below the subcarriers for a narrow bandwidth television signal on the S-band downlink. A 320 horizontal progressive line, 10 frame per second, format was chosen to fit in this space. This slow-scan format used only one-tenth of the 5 MHz bandwidth of the 525

Lunar Module FM Downlink Spectrum

interlaced lines, 30 frames per second format that was standard for television in the United States at the time.

NASA awarded contracts to both RCA and Westinghouse to develop the special slow-scan, black and white, television cameras for the Apollo project. RCA’s Astro Electronics Division, East Windsor, New Jersey, for the Command and Service Module spacecraft and Westinghouse Electric's Aerospace Division, Baltimore, Maryland, for the Lunar Module.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as part of its management of the world-wide Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), contracted with RCA Astro Electronics Division to design and provide a number of ground station devices to convert the Apollo slow-scan TV format to the normal American television format.

After a number of high level reviews, NASA finally approved the addition of television cameras aboard both the CSM and LM. The first use of a television camera was set for the Earth orbital flight of Apollo 7 in mid 1968. Both the installation and operation of the camera was to be on a non-interference basis to both the launch and operation of the spacecraft. The camera was to be used only as time and opportunity would permit.

APOLLO 7

The television camera first used on Apollo 7 was the CSM, slow-scan, black and white, camera made for NASA by RCA. The 85-cubic-inch TV camera weighed 4.5 pounds and required 6.75 watts at 28 volts dc. It had a 1-inch vidicon tube. It was fitted with a wide angle lens with coverage of 160 degrees. It used the same 320 line, 10 frames per second, progressive scan format that was dictated by the limited bandwidth available on the sole Lunar Module S-band downlink transmitter.

However, the final Block II CSM, developed after the tragic Apollo 1 fire, included an additional S-band downlink transmitter that was capable of handling the full video bandwidth of broadcast quality television signals. But there was neither the incentive nor the

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time to provide a new camera to take advantage of the increased bandwidth then available on the CSM. Since the RCA slow-scan video camera was already flight qualified for the CSM the decision was made to use it on Apollo 7.

In mid-1968 only two ground stations were equipped with prototypes of the new RCA Slow-Scan Converters.

These were the MSFN stations in Corpus Christi, Texas (TEX) and Merritt Island, Florida (MIL). This, coupled with the fact that Apollo 7 was in low Earth orbit, restricted the time a television broadcast could be received and processed to just seven short passes over the TEX and MIL MSFN stations.

APOLLO 8

During Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo orbital missions, there were periods of communications silence, especially in the southern hemisphere, because the worldwide tracking network did not cover all areas. But, the flight of Apollo 8 around the Moon was able to make much greater use of the RCA Slow Scan television camera.

The actual camera carried on Apollo 7 NASM Photo

To keep interference with crew activities to a minimum the camera was attached to a fixed position that could view the center and left side of the CSM crew seats with the wide angle lens. The astronauts were expected to use the television camera to show their colleagues in Mission Control, and the public watching TV, how they got along in their living quarters in the weightlessness of space.

The continuous coverage by the three prime, 26-meter, MSFN stations, located in Canberra, Australia (HSK), Goldstone, California (GDS) and in Madrid, Spain (MAD), made it possible to receive and process six different broadcasts for a total of ninety minutes of television, using their newly installed RCA Slow-Scan Converters.

Only Goldstone passed on the TV broadcasts to Houston as there were no real-time video circuits set up from HSK or MAD.

But, when flight plan changes crowded their schedule, spacecraft commander Walter Schirra canceled the first of several planned television demonstrations. Deke Slayton tried to change Wally’s mind, but was told sharply that there would be no TV show that day!

When the broadcasts finally began the crew appeared to enjoy them, using cue cards, such as "Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming In, Folks" and "Hello from the Lovely Apollo Room high atop everything." The cue cards were supplied by record producer Michael Kapp, who also provided cassettes for their musical enjoyment.

Astronaut Frank Borman halfway to the Moon on Apollo 8

The first Apollo 8 TV broadcast started some 31 hours into the mission. The use of a 9 mm wide angle lens inside the spacecraft provided good pictures. Frank Borman acted as both director and narrator, Jim Lovell as an actor preparing a meal, and all three crewmen as Cameramen. However, problems were encountered when Bill Anders replaced the interior wide-angle lens with a telephoto lens so he could show the Earth from halfway to the Moon.

Fairchild slow-scan TV photo at Goldstone 74

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The initial views were of poor quality because of the higher-than expected contrast between the earth and its background. The automatic light control of the camera adjusted to a value determined by averaging the light over the entire view field. This caused the very

bright Earth to be considerably overexposed making it impossible to obtain a usable image.

The telephoto lens problem pointed out the need for better flight crew training as well as the need for television camera experts on hand at Mission Control.

When coupled with the lack of a sighting device or a monitor for the crew to see what the TV camera was seeing, most of this first broadcast was spent trying to figure out the problem.

To read the Apollo 8 transcript, during the problems with the TV camera, on the Apollo 8 Flight Journal go to GET 031:10:23 on this link: http://history.nasa.gov/ ap08fj/07day2_maroon.htm. The fix worked out on the ground was read up to the crew at GET 031:10:23.

Check this link for details: http://history.nasa.gov/ ap08fj/09day3_green.htm.

The rendezvous windows are designed to look along the spacecraft's plus-X axis as an aid to guiding the CSM when performing a rendezvous and docking with the Lunar Module. By attaching the camera to a bracket, the camera will be made to look along a well defined axis that is 30° away from the plus-X axis. Thus, the spacecraft itself becomes a steerable platform that can be used to aim the camera at the Earth in a controlled fashion. Subsequent telecasts of the earth using the telephoto lens with the filters were satisfactory.

Once Apollo 8 entered Moon orbit, the crew conducted three more television broadcasts for a total of 49 minutes. Jim Lovell, using his optical devices to get a better look, described what was being photographed.

Anders raced from window to window for the best vantage points for photographing the lunar surface, especially the areas being considered for landing sites.

USE OF THE RCA SLOW SCAN CONVERTER The Apollo 8 slow-scan television signals were received by the three primary Manned Space Flight Network stations and converted to NTSC black and white television images using devices manufactured by the RCA Astro Electronics Division for this purpose.

In the days before solid-state frame synchronizers RCA had quite a challenge putting together a system that would convert the progressive 320 line, 10 frames per second Apollo camera format to the interlaced 525 line, 30 frames per second broadcast television standard in real time. To accomplish this RCA used an off-the-shelf vidicon camera to view the screen of a special monitor that displayed the Apollo camera picture.

Later in the mission the crew again unstowed the television camera. This time they attached filters from the 70-mm camera to the telephoto lens with tape. Then the camera was attached to the TV mounting point on the Commander's side of the hatch with an adjustable bracket to point out rendezvous window number 2.

The RCA TK-22 camera chosen was developed years earlier for broadcast television film chain use. The camera was focused on the screen of a 10-inch diameter, slow-scan, cathode ray tube (CRT) mounted in the same triple-width equipment rack. This optical configuration was very similar to the kinescope recording system used in the days before the introduction of video tape recorders in the mid 1950’s.

View of the Moon at the end of the Apollo 8 crew’s “Genesis” Message

Operating Console of the RCA Apollo Slow Scan Converter

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The operating controls for the slow-scan monitor are seen in the upper left of this photograph. The black operating panel for the TK-22 camera can be seen in the top center of the console. The slow-scan monitor had a high persistence phosphor to keep a visible image from one frame to the next. The camera was gated to capture one incoming frame just after it was written on the monitor screen.

The TK-22 camera operated at the NTSC interlaced frame rate. It had to scan two fields of 262.5 lines to complete one full 525 line NTSC frame. It takes a total of 33 milliseconds to scan one full NTSC frame.

However the camera had to capture one full Apollo camera frame during the slow scan monitor’s short, 2.5 millisecond, vertical retrace period. This was not a problem for the first TK-22 262.5 line field. But the slow scan monitor would start writing the next Apollo camera frame before the TK-22 vidicon could start scanning the

RCA solved this problem by limiting the scan converted video to one 262.5 line field scan of each Apollo camera frames. This field was fed to the converter output and also to a magnetic disk recorder for later playback. The disk recorder used was originally designed for slow-motion television replays of sports events. It was modified to act as a field store recorder.

This left the problem of how to fill in for the missing second 262.5 line field in the converter video output.

To do this RCA used a quartz video delay line to shift the first 262.5 line field so that it would fall halfway between the displayed lines of the first field.

The processing sequence of events was as follows: 1. Write the first Apollo camera frame on the slow-scan monitor screen.

2. Scan the displayed frame with one 262.5 line TK-22 field, record this field on the disk recorder and route it in real-time to converter video output.

3. Play back the recorded field from the disk recorder; delay it by 31.8 microseconds in a quartz video delay line to emulate the second 262.5 line field position in the video output signal. This completes the first full frame of 525 NTSC interlaced lines.

4. Play back the same recorded field but do NOT delay it. Just route it to the video output of the converter.

5. Playback the recorded field and delay it by 31.5 Âľsec before routing it to the video output.

Fairchild slow-scan TV photo at Goldstone

second 262.5 line field to complete the full 525 line frame. So the second field would show the top of second Apollo frame overlapped with the fading first Apollo camera frame.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5, four more times, to complete six interlaced 262.5 line fields to make up three full 525 line frames.

7. Repeat steps 1 through 6 for the second lunar camera frame and so on.

Scan Converter Simplified Block Diagram 76

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tapes on later missions. As a result no such recordings are known to exist today.

APOLLO 9 Apollo 9 marked the first use of the Westinghouse slowscan Lunar Camera. Since this was the first manned use of the Lunar Module the mission was conducted in low Earth orbit. The TV camera was stowed inside the LM ascent stage so the crew could operate it.

Not long after Jim McDivitt and Rusty Schweickart entered the LM the camera was powered up and used briefly to beam their activities to Mission Control starting at 46:28 GET. Photo courtesy Richard Diehl, webmaster Lab Guy’s World

Because of the optical transfer medium and the limited 262 line vertical resolution the RCA scan conversion process produced results on a par with the old broadcast television optical kinescope recorders used in the 1950’s. As with kinescope recordings, there was a considerable loss of visual detail in the process. As a result slow scan images converted during the Apollo missions were considerably lower than normal broadcast quality.

The NTSC output of the slow scan converter was recorded on Ampex VR-660B video recorders for later playback in the event of a microwave circuit failure between the station and Houston. The VR-660 was one of the first professional recorders using helical scan that was to become the standard scan method for Beta and VHS VCR’s used throughout the World in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The VR-660 recorder used two-inch wide tape and operated at a tape speed of 3.7 inches per second.

The recorder was normally loaded with 5540 foot, 12.5 inch diameter, reels that could record up to five hours of NTSC television signals.

Unconverted Apollo slow-scan television signals were recorded on wide-band analog tape recorders at each of the prime receiving stations. The video output of the Unified S-band Signal Data Demodulators (SDDS) were routed to Mincom M-22 or Ampex FR-1400 analog recorders running at 120 inches-per second (IPS) to capture the full bandwidth of the downlink TV signal.

The second and longer TV transmission started at 74:58 GET shortly after Rusty Sweickart’s EVA. The original flight plan called for Rusty to take the TV camera outside

Stan Lebar, the WEC camera project manager, displays the Westinghouse Lunar Camera

Rusty Schweickart wearing the EVA PLSS

The recorders were loaded with 9600 foot reels of oneinch wide instrumentation recording tape. Each recorder would run only 15 minutes at this high speed. As a result two recorders were run alternately so that one could be unloaded and reloaded with a new reel of tape while the first recorder was being used.

The recordings of the unconverted slow-scan television broadcasts were retained on station in case it was necessary to use these tapes after the fact in the event of an RCA Slow Scan Converter failure. However, this never happened. The stations were instructed to reuse the

Rusty Schweickart and Jim McDivitt in the LM after the EVA

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the LM during the EVA. However, the EVA was shortened due to Rusty’s motion sickness the previous day and the TV coverage of the EVA was scrubbed.

APOLLO 10

Apollo 10 marked the first use of color television on the CSM. The Apollo 10 crew gave viewers on the Earth a front row seat to the docking of the CSM with the LM shortly after translunar injection. Color views of the SIVB third stage were shown after the separation.

Later the interior of the CSM and pictures of each of the crew members were seen. Once in lunar orbit the world was treated to views of the surface of the Moon. In the first four days the crew broadcast more color television– about 3 hours – than was planned for the whole mission.

Aviation Week and Space Technology reporter Warren Wetmore said in a May 26, 1969 AW&ST article that the crew’s enthusiasm for the TV system appeared greater than that of previous Apollo crews and is attributed largely to spacecraft commander Thomas P. Stafford.

“As far as we’re concerned, he was the prime mover” on getting color television capability into the Apollo

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The LM still attached to the S-IVB

LM Rendezvous Window after Docking

Tom Stafford and John Young in the CSM

Stafford holding the LM’s Namesake

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10 command module, an Apollo TV engineer said. “He influenced our management, and they influenced us.” The ground-based color conversion equipment was put together in about four months.

WESTINGHOUSE FIELD SEQUENTIAL COLOR CAMERA Westinghouse engineers had already decided in 1968 that NASA would need a color TV camera for space missions, and had begun work to build one. An NTSC color TV camera was clearly impractical; as such devices were big and far too unreliable in harsh environments. However, a color-wheel camera, first developed by CBS in 1940, was not much more complicated than a black and white camera, and could be easily built as a small hand-held unit.

The main problem was that the color-wheel camera, with its sequential red-green-blue images, was not compatible with the NTSC system, which broadcast all three colors at once. Westinghouse engineers got around the obstacle by recommending that a conversion device be installed in the Houston Mission Control Center that would store the camera's sequential images on magnetic media, and then convert these into a standard NTSC color broadcast signal.

To give the astronauts a viewfinder Westinghouse also developed a very small black and white TV monitor that could be attached to the camera or used separately to allow the astronaut cameramen to see what the camera saw. To accomplish this effort in the shortest time Westinghouse adapted the design of an off-the-shelf Japanese manufactured micro-TV receiver for use aboard the CSM. All of the monitor components, with the exception of the CRT and deflection yoke, were fabricated using NASA and Mil-Spec standards. Since no suitable CRT and yoke could be obtained that would meet NASA specifications without encountering excessive costs, Westinghouse engineers chose to use original manufacturer’s parts.

The high voltage components were potted with special materials to operate in the spacecraft environment.

Uncased color wheel assembly and camera

The camera and monitor was ready in 1969, and was taken along on the Apollo 10 Moon-orbiting mission and on the Apollo 11 Moon-landing mission, though it was not used to take images during Moon walks. Later landings would use the color-wheel camera to transmit images of excursions on the Moon's surface.

For more information about the FS Color Camera go to these links for PDF copies of 1. Westinghouse Color Camera Operation and Training Manual.

2. WEC News Release, May 16, 1969.

3. Invention and Technology, Summer 1997, The Color War Goes to the Moon article. www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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WESTINGHOUSE FIELD SEQUENTIAL COLOR CAMERA After the field sequential color signals were received at the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center these were converted to NTSC by an ingenious combination of two 2-inch Quad VTR's and three full-field video storage devices that used a high speed magnetic disk recorders as a field store device back in the dark ages of video.

In the days before solid-state frame synchronizers, the problem of how to lock the space borne camera’s signal to the USA TV Network NTSC standard was neatly solved by the use of two 2-inch quad VTR’s operating in tandem. The raw field-sequential color signal was recorded on the first VTR, which was locked to the incoming signal. Then the tape was fed to the second VTR via a tape loop. The second VTR ran in the reproduce mode and its speed was locked to the USA NTSC network sync standard. Camera time-base variations, caused by downlink Doppler shifts and the camera’s sync generator temperature changes, were effectively removed through the use of the tandem VTR system.

As each of the sequential red, green and blue fields was reproduced on the second VTR each color was recorded on separate tracks of a magnetic-disk video recorder.

Since field or frame store devices did not exist in 1969, NASA adapted available video disk recorders, commonly used by US commercial TV broadcast networks for sports slow-motion playback, for this task.

Since the disk recorder continued to run, the red channel video output would be repeated two additional fields while the Blue and Green fields were being received and stored in their designated recorder tracks.

The Blue and Green field store recorder tracks would also repeat the same field two more times while waiting for their respective color fields to be received.

Red (Cyan) Field

Green (Magenta) Field

The result of this process was the production of three separate red, blue and green channels that were each updated 20 times per second instead of the normal 60 fields per second for the USA black and white TV standard. The three channels were matrixed together to produce an NTSC output signal that was synchronized to the USA national NTSC time base so it could be released in near real-time to the US television networks, delayed only by the time the tape took to move from the record VTR to the playback VTR.

APOLLO 11 Television, the one item of worldwide public impact, was very important on this flight. Deke Slayton even urged the addition of an erectable antenna on the lunar surface. After all, the crewmen could not be expected to wait patiently in the lander until the earth moved Goldstone, California, and its 64-meter dish into line with the spacecraft before they climbed out onto the surface. 38 Before the Apollo 11 mission NASA arranged for the support of the first lunar landing by two 64-meter diameter antennas at Goldstone, California and at Parkes, Australia. The larger dishes improved the Apollo downlink signal levels by between 8 and 10 dB making it possible to receive signals considerably weaker than those received by the normal 26-meter Apollo antennas.

The added sensitivity of the Goldstone 64-meter antenna proved invaluable when the Apollo 11 Lunar Module encountered antenna pointing problems during the powered descent. It allowed controllers at Houston the see the LM data and to tell the Astronauts that they were

Goldstone DSS-14 64-meter Antenna, July 1969

Blue (Yellow) Field

NTSC Output

Subtractive Representation of the Field Sequential to NTSC Color Conversion Process

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“GO� on computer overload alarms displayed just before the landing on the Moon.

At Goldstone the DSS-14 Mars DSN Block III S-band receiver 50 MHz IF and baseband outputs were sent over a new Collins Radio C-band microwave link to the nearby Apollo MSFN station to be demodulated and processed there. The top microwave dish next to the operations building in this photograph sent the signals to a similar dish at the Goldstone Prime site via a passive repeater

64-meter Radio Telescope, Parkes, Australia, 1969 [CSIRO Photo]

Pioneer DSS-11 DSN Station, 1969

located on a hilltop between the Mars station and the Apollo station.

Additional back-up support was provided by the Pioneer Deep Space Network station at Goldstone. This station had a MSFN wing added to the operations building that duplicated the antenna and Unified S-band equipment that was available at the Prime Apollo station. The Wing station was connected to the Prime station by an X-band microwave link.

In Australia, the 64-meter radio-telescope at Parkes was made available by the Australian government to improve the signal gathering capabilities when the Moon was within view of the MSFN station near Canberra, Australia. Goddard Space Flight Center dispatched engineers and equipment to Australia to assist in the modification of the Parkes antenna to receive the Apollo downlink. A very complete account of how the Parkes radio-telescope was used to support the Apollo 11 mission was published by the Astronomical Society of Australia in 2001. Go here for a PDF version: On Eagles Wings.

As at the two other 26-meter MSFN stations, a nearby 26-meter DSN station was equipped with a duplicate Unified S-Band system to provide an additional backup tracking capability in case the USB system at the Honeysuckle Creek Prime suffered a failure. The baseband and 50 MHz IF signals were sent to HSK over a microwave link.

Goldstone 26-meter MSFN Station, July 1969

The FM modulated downlink television signals were demodulated and sent along to Houston via two different common carrier microwave links housed in the small building in the right foreground of the photograph above.

Two different microwave paths were used to provide redundancy in case of a failure of one link to Houston.

26-meter DSS-42 Deep Space Network Station, Tidbinbilla, Australia, 1969

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of the signal being fed to Houston. Australia’s three commercial networks, Channel 7, 9 and 10, received a feed of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk from the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Honeysuckle Creek MSFN Station, Australia

Both the DSS-42 and Parkes microwave links were configured to carry the telemetry and voice signals to the Honeysuckle Creek MSFN station. HSK was the Australian hub for voice and data communications with the Apollo spacecraft. It was connected to the Canberra NASCOM facility in the Deakin suburb of the Australian Capital Territory by landline and a microwave link for television signals. Canberra NASCOM was connected via the Australian Post Master General (PMG) circuits to Sydney Video in the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) office in Paddington and on to the Australian Intelsat terminal at Moree.

The television signal from Parkes was sent direct to Sydney Video, over a separate PGM microwave link, where a choice was made between the HSK or Parkes television signals as to which would be sent on to Houston via satellite. The RCA Slow Scan Converter in the center of this photograph was used for the Parkes video feed. Sydney Video also fed the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s (ABC) countrywide network of television stations with a 625 line version

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Houston Mission Operations Control Room during Apollo 11

COLOR TELEVISION IN THE CSM

Color television was so effective on Apollo 10 that it was adopted for Apollo 11, but only in the command module.

Max Faget was more than mildly upset when he learned that the television, motion picture, and much of the still photography planned for Apollo 11 would be in black and white. To him, it was “almost unbelievable" that the culmination of a $20-billion program "is to be recorded in such a stingy manner." 40

Mike Collins demonstrates the CSM DSKY

The Apollo 11 path to the moon was accurate, requiring only one midcourse correction, a burst from the service propulsion engine of less than three seconds to change the velocity by six meters per second. Not having much to do gave the pilots an opportunity to describe what they were seeing and, through color television, to share these sights and life inside a lunar-bound spacecraft with a worldwide audience. 6

drive current variations to be induced in the camera video output.

On Saturday, 19 July, television viewers in both hemispheres had watched as the crew removed the probe and drogue and opened the tunnel between the two craft. Aldrin slid through, adjusted his mind to the new body orientation, checked out the systems, and wiped away the moisture that had collected on the lunar module windows, while the world watched over his shoulder.

APOLLO 11 LUNAR SURFACE CAMERA

Apollo 11 CSM Interior video showing motor drive hum bars

One problem was uncovered with the color camera during Apollo 11. During the relatively dim lighting inside the CSM two horizontal bars could be seen in the picture. The camera AGC circuit increased the video gain during dim lighting and made the problem more visible.

After the mission Westinghouse found and corrected an internal ground loop that caused color wheel motor

Color TV Camera and Monitor in use by Neil Armstrong inside the LM

Early in the Apollo program NASA became aware of a special low-light television imaging tube that Westinghouse had developed for the Department of Defense. Due to the war in Viet Nam, the Army was developing low light devices for use as jungle surveillance devices and on aircraft to spot a downed pilot at night.

To meet the DOD requirements Westinghouse developed a sensitive image tube that combined a variable-gain light intensifier with a secondary electron conduction (SEC) target. The SEC tube had the capability to reproduce objects in motion, at low light levels, without

Westinghouse Lunar Surface Camera

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the normal smearing produced by vidicon or image orthicon tubes.

At the time the SEC tube had a DOD security classification as befitted such a device. Since there were no other device that could possibly meet the Apollo TV camera mission requirement to operate unattended at both lunar day and lunar night and survive all phases of the Apollo mission, the DOD was asked to allow Westinghouse to use the SEC tube for the Apollo TV Camera program.

The SEC tube was in its early stages of development and the Westinghouse Apollo TV Camera program took on the task of developing the unique Apollo SEC tube (at the Westinghouse Tube Div. in Elmira, NY by Dr. Gerhard Götze) which was ultimately used on Apollo 9 and operated from the LM porch in earth orbit and subsequently Apollo 11 on the lunar surface.

The camera was handled by Westinghouse internally as an unclassified device (except for the classified items as stated above). Stan Lebar, the WEC Apollo Lunar Camera Project Manager said “we did not bring any attention to the classification and I doubt if the many hundreds of people that handled the assembly during its production ever knew its classification status.”

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Since there were no restrictions on the photographs of the assembled camera or its characteristics, the media was given both press releases and demonstrations on its capabilities. The fact that an SEC tube was used was clearly stated in the technical articles written during that time.

Westinghouse made extensive use of custom made microelectronic circuits the keep the camera small, light and reliable. Of the 43 integrated circuits used, 24 are of different types and 19 of these were especially designed for the camera. The custom circuits are of both monolithic silicon and multiple-chip hybrid designs.

Since the sync circuit requires the largest number of integrated circuits – 12 flip-flop packages and 7 gate

Multi-chip Hybrid Microelectronic Sync Circuit

packages – it was essential to use devices with low power switching capability.

To capture Man’s first steps upon the Moon the TV camera was stowed on a special shockmounted angled mount on the LM MESA. It was positioned so that the camera would be nearly vertical and upside down when the MESA was released by Neil Armstrong after he first emerged from the LM. There was not enough space between the stowed MESA and the descent section of the LM for an adapter to put the camera closer to vertical. As a result the Apollo 11 TV images are tipped to the right, showing the lunar horizon some 11 degrees off horizontal.

The inside of the MESA was covered with a special insulating blanket to protect the contents from temperature extremes during the flight to the Moon. Just before launch Paul Coan, the MSC TV camera manager, asked the Grumman personnel to cut a hole in the blanket to allow the lens to poke through it. After Neil Armstrong went on the surface he removed the blanket to allow access to the camera and other equipment stowed on the MESA. Neil later removed the camera and set it up away from the LM on a tripod.

The TV images of Neil's climb down the ladder and first steps on the surface were transmitted to Earth through the steerable high-gain antenna on the LM. However the

crew could have deployed an erectable S-Band antenna to provide stronger signals. Since both the Goldstone and Parkes 64-meter dishes were on line, this was not necessary.

Buzz Aldrin deploring the Solar Wind experiment

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Hasselblad image showing Apollo 11 placement of TV camera and cable

For more information about the Slow Scan Lunar Camera go to these links for PDF copies of

5. Manned Spaceflight Center Pre-Installation Acceptance Test Plan

1. Manned Spaceflight Center Lunar Camera Statement of Work.

6. Aviation Week & Space Technology Editorial, July 28, 1969

2. WEC Reprint “Electronics” March 6, 1967 article on the SS Lunar Camera

Interesting Internet links about the Apollo 11 Lunar Camera: 1. On Eagle's Wing The Story of the Parkes Apollo 11 Support

3. Westinghouse “Engineer” March 1968 article on the SS Lunar Camera 4. The original Westinghouse Lunar Camera Operations Manual

2. Newseum’s “Live from the Moon!”

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MSFN PERFORMANCE DURING APOLLO 11 LUNAR CAMERA OPERATION

Before the EVA started the crew configured the LM S-band downlink to combine the TV video with the 1.024 MHz TLM and 1.25 MHz voice subcarriers on a single FM modulated 2282.5 MHz carrier.

DSS-14 Video via Goldstone, GET 109:22:06

DSS-14’s video via Goldstone, GET 109:23:44

Right after Buzz Aldrin depressed the TV camera circuit breaker a video signal was received both at the Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek. However Houston was connected to Goldstone’s video and only saw an upside down picture that was stark black and white with little visible detail.

In the meantime Houston Video was checking the video signal that was being sent from Honeysuckle Creek via the Sydney Video switching center. It was immediately clear that the video signal from HSK was superior that being received from GDS.

DSS-14 Video via Goldstone, GET 109:22:32

After Houston Video instructed the Goldstone scan converter operator to place the converter Invert switch to the correct position the video display was flipped over but still had too high a contrast to make out any details in the shadow of the LM.

Honeysuckle Creek’s Video, GET 109:23:48

Note the improvement in the shadow detail as well as the increase in video snow. Note also the light spot in the upper center of the GDS picture. This is a defect in the slow scan converter camera that makes it easy to identify when Goldstone’s video is being seen.

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that the GDS Slow Scan Converter internal monitor black level was set at a level that compressed the dim shadow details into black. The HSK and Sydney Video scan converters were set properly.

DSS-14 Negative Video via Goldstone, GET 109:27:05

Houston Video switched to Goldstone at GET 109:26:53 when they saw what looked like an improved picture after the Goldstone TV Tech inverted the video polarity of the SS monitor in an attempt to troubleshoot their problem.

DSS-14 video via Goldstone, GET109:30:55

At the time of Armstrong’s first step on the Moon the Parkes 64-meter dish was still at its lower elevation limit. After the Parkes dish started tracking Sydney Video advised Houston Video that the best signal was from the 8 dB stronger Parkes antenna.

The Same DSS-14 video frame re-inverted to Positive

After the Apollo 11 mission NASA restored the negative video to positive for the archive copy of the EVA telecast. This shows a much improved picture for this short section of video. At the time no one realized the significance of this.

Only recently (2004) was the cause of the problem with the Goldstone Slow Scan Converter discovered. After a careful review of archived video sources it was found

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Parkes video via Sydney, GET109:31:00

After Houston saw the much improved television image from the Parkes 64-meter antenna they stayed with Parkes for the rest of the Apollo 11 EVA.

BEFORE AND AFTER SCAN CONVERSION COMPARISONS

Original 320 line, 10 frame per second Parkes Image, GET 109:52:35

Goldstone Fairchild Monitor Polaroid Photo

This photograph was taken directly off a Fairchild 320 line, 10 frames per second monitor located at Sydney Video control room using Polaroid PN-55, 4 by 5-inch, film. Look at the reflection in Buzz Aldrin’s visor and compare it with the after conversion photo.

This photograph was taken in real-time off the Slow Scan monitor used by the GSFC Public Affairs Officer to provide press representatives with photographs of the EVA. It shows the higher resolution and increased shadow detail that the Westinghouse camera was capable of producing.

Scan Converted 525 line, 30 frame per second Image, GET 109:52:30

Similar scene from NASA video archive

This photograph was taken of an NTSC monitor after scan conversion at Sydney Video very close to the time the unconverted photo was taken. This shows the loss of resolution and shadow detail that occurred during the conversion process.

This is a frame capture of a similar scene from Spacecraft Films Apollo 11 DVD set, disk 2, EVA TV. The source was from the NASA archive of Apollo television material. What looks like a staff in the Moon dirt to the right of the flag is actually an internal lens reflection from the very bright quad leg to the left of the Astronaut.

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WHY DID THE APOLLO 11 EVA TELEVISION IMAGES APPEAR RATHER DARK?

TV camera tubes at the time, including the Apollo TV cameras, produced an output voltage that was proportional to the light falling on the sensor surface.

However, the light output of the cathode ray tube normally used to view television signals is NOT proportional to the video signal applied to the CRT. The television broadcast industry required the inclusion of a gamma correction circuit in TV cameras to make the light output on TV screens proportional to the light on the camera tube. (Check this excellent chapter on gamma from Charles Poynton’s book “A Technical Introduction to Digital Video” for information about the need for gamma correction.)

However, the video circuits in the Westinghouse Apollo television cameras did not include gamma correction circuit as did most broadcast TV cameras of the period.

During the early design phase Westinghouse engineers decided that, since the television images might be used for scientific purposes, it would be preferable to keep the video imaging device and the camera video circuits operating in a linear, or a gamma 1.0, mode. As a result a gamma correction circuit was not included in any of the Westinghouse cameras used in the Apollo project.

This caused the EVA scene mid-tones to be considerably darker than would have been observed had the video signal been gamma corrected to correct for the nonlinear response of the cathode ray tubes used in broadcast television receivers.

The Apollo Slow Scan Lunar Camera was never used again after Apollo 11. However, the cameras were carried on Apollo 13, 14, 15 and 16 in case the Westinghouse color cameras failed. But its television footage will be shown forever, as long as there is interest in how man took those first steps on the moon.

APOLLO 12 WESTINGHOUSE LUNAR COLOR CAMERA After the successful operation of the Westinghouse field sequential color cameras in Apollo 10 and 11 Command and Service Modules the decision was made to use it on the lunar module for Apollo 12. Westinghouse took the

Apollo 12 camera showing camera adapter plug

camera used on Apollo 10 and modified it for use in the vacuum of space on the surface of the Moon.

The modifications included painting exterior white for thermal control, substituting coated metal gears for plastic gears in the color-wheel drive mechanism, provision for internal heat conduction paths to the camera outer shell for radiation and use of a special bearing lubricant. In addition, the Apollo 12 Command

Apollo 12 Color TV Camera mounted on the LM MESA

Module TV was the same camera flown in the Apollo 11 Command Module.

Apollo 12 erectable S-band dish antenna and color TV camera location. NASA AS12-46-6779

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As with the Apollo 11 lunar camera, the color TV camera was installed on a special angled adapter that would place the camera roughly vertical when the MESA was first deployed. When the strap is removed from the front

Pete Conrad removes the MESA insulating blanket after descending the ladder

The camera has just started to directly image the Sun at GET 115:58

Alan Bean on the lunar surface after the TV camera is flipped out for removal

Downlinked TV picture after second series of hammer blows

of the adapter it could swing out allowing the astronaut to remove the camera from the MESA.

before the camera was removed, were taken with it in this position.

After the start of the first Apollo 12 EVA the color TV camera performed as expected after being passed through a bandwidth limiting low-pass filter at the Goldstone MSFN station. This was necessary to prevent the LM TLM and voice subcarriers from interfering with the received television picture. The Westinghouse color camera video signal ran out to nearly 3 MHz while the subcarriers were at 1.024 MHz and 1.25 MHz.

At GET 115:58, Alan Bean removed the TV camera from the MESA camera mount. In the process of placing the camera on the tripod it was pointed directly into the Sun. Go to the Apollo 12 transcript to follow the discussion between the astronauts and Mission Control as they try to resolve this problem.

Right after the MESA insulating blanket was removed Pete Conrad flipped out the TV camera mount rotating it nearly upside down. All of the remaining TV images,

The damaged TV camera would never provide a usable picture after the Sun pointing, in spite of considerable effort by people on the ground and on the Moon. The crew was asked to bring the camera back with them so that it could be examined. The Apollo 12 camera when returned to NASA was carried directly to Westinghouse

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and unpacked and where all of the work was performed to verify cause of failure, power up the camera and disable the ALC to allow for viewing the camera image.

The Apollo 12 Mission Report contains a technical discussion of the TV camera failure: "[Post-flight] ground tests using an Apollotype image sensor (secondary electron conducting vidicon tube) exposed the camera system to extreme light levels. The resulting image on a monitor was very similar to that seen after the flight-camera failure.

After decontamination and cleaning, the flight camera [which Pete and Al brought back to Earth] was inspected and power was applied. The image, as viewed on a monitor, was the same as that last seen from the lunar surface. The automatic light-level control circuit was (then) disabled by cutting one wire.

The camera then reproduced good scene detail in that area of the picture which had previously been black, verifying that the black area of the target was

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undamaged (as shown in the figure). The finding also proved that the combination of normal automatic light control action and a damaged image-tube target caused the loss of picture.

In the process of moving the camera on the lunar surface, a portion of the target in the secondary electron conductivity vidicon must have received a high solar input, either directly from the sun or from some highly reflective surface. [An examination of the TV record indicates that Al pointed the TV at the Sun while mounting the camera on the tripod]. That portion of the target was destroyed, as was evidenced by the white appearance of the upper part of the picture.

Training and operational procedures, including the use of a lens cap, are being changed to reduce the possibility of exposing the image sensor to extreme light levels. In addition, design changes are being considered to include automatic protection, such as the use of an image sensor which is less susceptible to damage from intense light levels."

Finally, Eric Jones reviewed the Apollo 12 video tapes in late 1993; he noticed that during the period immediately following the camera failure, Al is faintly visible in the black portion of the image as he moves in front of the camera.]

Gene Kranz watching the last TV broadcast from Apollo 13

APOLLO 13 Although the Apollo 13 mission was cut short after an oxygen tank explosion on the Service Module, there had been considerable efforts to improve the reliability and performance of the television systems. This ranged from the installation of a Westinghouse Apollo style field sequential camera at the top of the Launch Umbilical Tower to the addition of a backup camera on the LM. A total of three television cameras were flown on Apollo 13. These were a B&W slow-scan camera stowed inside the LM ascent stage to be used in the event of problems with the white colored field-sequential color camera mounted on the MESA of the LM descent stage. The third camera was a black color camera to be used in the CSM. To improve launch coverage Westinghouse worked with the American Broadcasting Company, the TV pool operator, to install an Apollo style field sequential camera on the top of the launch umbilical tower (LUT).

The camera was mounted inside an insulated steel box to protect it from the blast of the Saturn V rocket engine exhaust as it rose above the LUT. A special Westinghouse field-sequential to NSTC converter was installed near the pool TV operations room to provide close-up broadcast quality color TV signals during the launch sequence. www.radioclubofamerica.org | SPRING 2019 PROCEEDINGS

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Westinghouse FS Color camera mounted on top of the Apollo 13 Launch Umbilical Tower

FS TV camera view on the Apollo 13 TV pool control room monitor

Westinghouse Color Camera in MESA mount, with the added lens cap, before Apollo 13 LM Closeout

To reduce the chance of accidental exposure to direct sunlight the Apollo 13 camera was fitted with an easyto-handle soft rubber lens cap permanently attached to the lens neck. Astronaut camera handling procedures

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were changed to cap the lens whenever the camera was moved from one place to another on the Moon. See the Westinghouse Apollo 13 Press Release for more detailed information.

APOLLO 14

Apollo 14 was provided with the same complement of two Westinghouse field sequential color cameras and one slow-scan black and white camera. This was the second mission to deploy the folding S-band dish to increase the downlink circuit margin. Further, to reduce the chance of damage from the Sun the LM camera was equipped with an astronaut-usable lens cap to be used whenever the camera was moved about. However, the camera’s video output still had a gamma response that made nearly all lunar surface scenes appear too dark.

very dark scene details while the “average” setting produced good shadows but scene highlights, especially the white spacesuits, appeared overexposed and blooming.

Astronauts near the Lunar Module

Scene with Camera set to “Peak”

Astronauts deploying the ALSEP station

When various lens aperture settings were tried the camera’s automatic video gain circuit kept the output signals essentially unchanged from f44 all the way open.

As a result the ground controllers asked the astronauts to operate the camera in the “average” position because the lunar surface looked better in that mode.

Scene with Camera set to “Average”

Starting at 114:08 MET the crew and ground controllers tried a number of different settings that included changing the camera peak-average switch and the lens aperture settings. The “peak” camera setting produced

Unfortunately, the blooming of the white surfaces of the astronauts suits made them look somewhat like Casper the Ghost when moving about. When coupled with the use of a brute-force low pass filter to remove the LM downlink subcarriers, this made for a less-than-optimum color television image.

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Al’s famous Golf Shot with the camera set to “peak”

Apollo 14 LM returning to the CSM

Gamma Corrected Image

Apollo 14 in-flight news conference

If the Apollo 14 lunar camera video had been gamma corrected from 1.0 to the current 2.2 broadcast TV gamma, the lunar scenes would have looked like this with the camera set to “peak” instead of the degraded images actually observed at the time.

The Westinghouse color camera used aboard the Apollo 14 Command and Service module was not bandwidth restricted and performed as it had on earlier missions.

There were a number of TV broadcasts showing inflight activities.

NASA Mission Control Room during Apollo 14 Lunar Module Extraction 96

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APOLLO SUBCARRIER CANCELLATION UNIT

After the less-than-spectacular performance of the lunar color camera on Apollo 12 and 14, NASA investigated ways of improving the television images from the surface of the Moon on the remaining flights.

While the new color camera planned for the RCA built Ground-Commanded Television Assembly (GCTA) had the promise of far better lunar surface color television performance, there was still the problem of the presence of voice and telemetry subcarriers right in the middle of the video bandpass at 1.024 MHz and 1.25 MHz. This was unavoidable because the Lunar Module and Rover had only one transmitter each (2282.5 and 2265.5 MHz) to send voice, data and TV signals back to the Earth. On the other hand, the Command and Service Module had separate voice/data and television transmitters (2287.5 and 2277.5 MHz) for this and did not have this interference problem. The interfering subcarriers were removed by the use of a simple lowpass filter during the Apollo 12 and 14 missions. This effectively limited the upper video bandwidth to 750 kHz, resulting in a considerable loss of picture detail.

During the Apollo 14 mission the TRW Corporation was asked to test a prototype interference reduction device at the Goldstone MSFN station. This device was based on the concept of forward error estimation and correction. It would analyze the spectrum of an interfering signal and then to generate a model of the interference to reduce or eliminate the interfering signal. However the device was unable to make any significant improvement in the Apollo 14 composite video downlink.

That unsuccessful test prompted Goldstone personnel to explore other ways to accomplish the same purpose

after the completion of the Apollo 14 mission. After a series of tests using off-the-shelf test equipment, Goldstone demonstrated a subcarrier cancellation process that removed the offending voice and telemetry signals from the LM downlink by reconstructing the two subcarriers and adding equal and opposite versions to the combined signal.

Dick Nafzger, the GSFC MSFN television systems engineer, worked with the Applied Physics Laboratory MSFN support personnel, who took the Goldstone concept and implemented it into hardware for the three 26-meter MSFN stations.

The final design used the same bandpass filters used in the LM and in the Rover LCRU transmitters to produce the actual waveforms needed to algebraically subtract the actual voice and telemetry subcarriers from the combined FM downlink. While only the 1.25 MHz subcarrier was present in the Rover LCRU 2265.5 MHz downlink, the Subcarrier Cancellation Unit had to handle a 1.25 MHz voice/biomed subcarrier and a second 1.024 MHz telemetry subcarrier used on the LM’s 2282.5 MHz downlink.

First the 1.25 KHz filter was used to isolate the voice/ biomed subcarrier from the combined FM baseband signal. The FM demodulated baseband signal was delayed in a quartz video delay line to compensate for the time delay introduced by the narrow bandpass of the cancellation unit 1.25 MHz filter. Then the delayed baseband signal was summed with an equal amplitude, but opposite polarity, signal from the narrow bandpass filtered 1.25 MHz subcarrier. The result was the nearly complete cancellation of the 1.25 MHz subcarrier in the baseband video signal.

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The wider and more complex spectrum caused with the added 1.024 MHz telemetry subcarrier when transmitting the initial EVA TV pictures using the LM S-band downlink required a different approach. Spare Signal Data Demodulator System (SDDS) modules were built into the Subcarrier Cancellation Unit to decode the real-time TLM bitstream and then to remodulate an isolated 1.024 MHz subcarrier to provide an input for the second summation amplifier.

The SDDS TLM test modulator was phase synchronized with the demodulator to make it coherent with the delayed S/C TLM subcarrier. Then a second video delay line compensated for the longer demod-remod-filter time delay. As in the 1.25 MHz cancellation process an actual spacecraft 1.024 MHz bandpass filter was used to produce an accurate spectrum that would provide the maximum attenuation of the unwanted subcarriers.

Photo taken during SCU manual adjustment

Both the level and phase of the reinserted subcarriers could be adjusted manually to ensure the maximum rejection of the subcarriers was obtained. It was occasionally necessary for the MSFN station television technician to manually tweak the level and phase settings during the television downlink transmission.

These photos show the effect on picture quality by even a slight misadjustment of the Subcarrier Cancellation Unit.

The Apollo subcarrier cancellation unit was used on Apollo 15 through 17. That capability was developed at Goldstone and implemented by the Applied Physics Laboratory for Goddard Space Flight Center. This ability to remove the interfering subcarriers from the Lunar Module and Rover downlinks was a key factor in the production of broadcast-quality color television images.

Photo taken after the adjustment was completed

THE RCA PROCEEDINGS ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE RCA’s bi-annual publication is now available to all Club members in the members-only section of the RCA website.

Don’t have a login or not sure if your membership is current?

Contact us at amy@radioclubofamerica.org or (612) 405-2012.

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APOLLO 15 GROUND-COMMANDED TELEVISION ASSEMBLY (GCTA) Apollo 15 marked the first use of the Lunar Rover with its remotely controlled color television camera. Back during the engineering phase for the J-missions, William E. (Bill) Perry, a young engineer in the Engineering and Development Directorate (E&D) came up with a proposal to provide a remote controlled color television camera and pan and tilt mount on the Rover. The camera would be controlled from the INCO consoles in the JSC MCC.

The concept of a ground controlled color television camera was enthusiastically endorsed by MSC Deputy Director Christopher Kraft, who asked Max Faget, Ed Fendell and his INCO group to work closely with JSC E&D and RCA, the selected contractor. The result was a television camera system that could be easily controlled from the INCO consoles in the MOCR. A PDF version of the Operation and Checkout Manual for the GCTA provides considerable detail and can be reviewed by those interested.

The first GCTA worked amazingly well during the Apollo 15 mission. At each stop the astronauts would activate

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the camera and orient its antenna toward earth. For the first time, scientists at Mission Control would be able to look over the astronauts' shoulders during surface exploration.

Unlike the rover itself, the camera could be controlled from earth by Ed Fendell’s INCO team, allowing scientists to direct the lunar activity, if necessary, on the basis of what they could see. Alternatively, they could use the camera to survey the area for interesting features while the astronauts carried out their preplanned activities.

Finally, as the last EVA was about to end, the astronauts parked the Rover where the GCTA could observe the LM during the departure from the surface of the Moon.

Then, while the television camera watched, Falcon's ascent stage shot up from the surface in a shower of fragments of insulation, visible for only a second or two.

Flight controllers had intended to follow Falcon with the camera, but decided against it after a problem developed in the camera's elevation drive. The result contrasted sharply with the majestic rise of a Saturn V; with a "quick pop" and "a shower of sparks [that] looked more

The Apollo 15 Lunar Module Liftoff as seen in the Houston MOCR 100

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like something left over from the Fourth of July," as New York Times columnist Tom Wicker put it, Falcon quickly disappeared from the TV screen.

Much information was collected about the GCTA system performance that is detailed in the Interim Final Report, RCA R-3838F, 25 February 1972. The only problem that

affected operation was elevation clutch slippage when the camera was driven down near the lower stop. Several times it was necessary for the crew to manually raise the camera out of the slippage area.

The elevation clutch problem prevented the planned coverage of the Apollo 15 LM ascent from the surface of the Moon. After the Apollo 15 mission, RCA redesigned the camera elevation clutch to better operate in the extremes of the lunar environment. Check out Sam Russell’s excellent first-person account; Shooting the Apollo Moonwalks. Sam was part of the RCA Astro Electronics group who supported the Apollo 15 through 17 missions at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

IMAGE TRANSFORM While the Apollo 15 lunar surface color television was very impressive, there was yet another technological breakthrough that would improve the quality of the images from the Moon still further. In spite of the use of the two big 64-meter dishes on the Earth, a slight amount of video noise (or snow) was present in the lunar surface broadcasts. This was caused by the use of a wide 5 MHz video bandwidth on the frequency modulated S-band downlink. That reduced the overall circuit margin experienced during earlier Apollo missions.

Image Transform, a small North Hollywood start-up company, had opened its doors only a few months before the Apollo 16 mission to make video-to-film transfers.

The company developed the first practical temporal noise reduction system to enable them to clean up the video before making new films. John Lowry, the founder of Image Transform, used their new image processing system to improve a sample recording of the Apollo 15 television downlink. John was so encouraged by this that he contacted NASA to tell them about what they had done.

In February of 1972, two months before the Apollo 16 launch, John Lowry visited Col. James McDivitt at MSC to show him the results of the Image Transform process.

John demonstrated about two minutes of before and after processing of three scenes from the Apollo 15 lunar video. As a direct result of this demonstration Image Transform was contracted to process and clean up the lunar surface video for Apollo 16.

To add an effective 3db to 6 db improvement in video SNR the Apollo 16 video was routed from Houston to Image Transform in North Hollywood for processing. This is how the Image Transform System worked: Video noise is random from one frame to next. However, the static areas of the images are largely correlated frame-to-frame. By separating areas of motion from the static portions of the picture, the Image Transform System continuously combined four frames of video to make each new frame.

Unprocessed Apollo 16 Image

Processed Apollo 17 Image

In static regions of the pictures the noise was reduced by a factor of four enabling significant enhancement of the detail. The areas that were in motion were spatially filtered to reduce the noise a little, but did not impair the quality perception of the images seriously due to the speed of the motion. The spatially filtered static and temporally filtered motion portions of the images were recombined in such a manner as to leave few, if any, artifacts relating to the images having been processed.

The random video noise was quite obviously reduced, the images were enhanced, and the final broadcast pictures looked remarkably good. This process not only improved the SNR of the low light cameras and other noisy parts of camera chains but also cleaned up the noise from the Apollo color TV downlinks and microwave distribution paths.

Here was the lunar surface video processing chain for Apollo 16 and 17: 1. Reception at one of the three Apollo MSFN ground stations. Removal of the 1.024 MHz TLM and

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1.25 voice/biomed subcarriers from the S-band FM Lunar Module downlink. Transfer the resulting fieldsequential video to Houston MSC. 2. Conversion of the field-sequential color signal to NTSC at Houston MSC. Transfer the converted NTSC signal to Image Transform in North Hollywood, California.

3. Video noise reduction and image enhancement by the Image Transform process. Transfer the cleaned up NTSC video back to Houston via microwave for recording and release to the media.

There were a minimum of three long-haul video circuits involved from Goldstone to Houston to North Hollywood and back to Houston process. Another three or four long haul video circuits were added between Parkes and Honeysuckle and Sydney in Australia to provide the video from those ground stations.

Since Spain did not have one of the large 64-meter antennas most TV coverage was scheduled through Goldstone and Australia. There was some coverage through the Madrid 26-meter MSFN station on occasion.

The first pictures broadcast were from the Madrid station providing Image Transform with a real challenge. Yet these pictures were remarkably better than those from any of the prior Apollo missions.

The images from the Goldstone station were bordering on what was considered at the time as studio quality. There were artifacts created whenever the field-sequential color cameras were used to cover fast moving targets. This

resulted in things that were in motion appear in short bursts of red, green or blue colors.

For instance, the lift-off of the Apollo 17 Lunar Module ascent stage was covered perfectively by Ed Fendell programming the remote tilt of the Rover color camera.

When the engine ignited it blew "confetti" colored stuff in all directions!

John Lowry, the founder of Image Transform, continues working in this field today with his followon company, Lowry Digital Images, which specializes in super resolution for motion picture restoration and enhancement. He has digitally restored over 100 major films making pristine DVDs and/or new film negatives.

Commander John Young makes his famous leaping salute that was also captured by the GCTA camera

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APOLLO 16 In addition to the Westinghouse color TV camera in the CSM the Apollo 16 LRV carried an RCA GroundControlled Television Assembly that had been improved based on experience during the Apollo 15 mission. This was also the first mission where Image Transform was contracted to provide a near real-time clean-up and enhancement of the television pictures from the surface of the Moon. This provided the clearest television images to that point in time.

Chief among the camera changes were improved azimuth and elevation clutches and changes to the azimuth stops to permit viewing on the astronauts while seated in the LRV. The larger single spring slip clutches allowed the camera to be rotated in the temperature extremes encountered during three “days” of operation. The astronauts were also given a special lens hood to place on the camera to reduce the amount of glare caused when direct sunlight fell on the front of the lens. RCA’s GCTA Interim Final Report details the changes made for Apollo 16 and 17.

Apollo 15 TV Camera

Apollo 16 TV Camera

Astronaut John Young aligns high-gain antenna at Station 8

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John Young filling a sample return bag

Astronauts near House Rock

Charles Duke picking up a football sized rock

Loading the Rover with Moon samples

Apollo 16 Liftoff from the Moon

Screen captures from Spacecraft Films Apollo 16 DVD sets show the high level of performance of the RCA GTCA camera and the ground station signal processing.

The Rover’s camera was able to capture the Lunar Module’s ascent stage departing the Moon’s surface by the careful programming of elevation motion commands

by Ed Fendell’s INCO crew in the Houston mission 104

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control center. The timed command sequence was started slightly before the actual firing of the engine to take into account the 1.25 seconds it took for the signal to travel from the Earth to the Moon. One can see the cloud of Moon dust stirred up by the rocket engine as the LM ascent stage departs.

This photo shows Apollo 16 astronaut “TK” Mattingly returning the PAN camera cassette to the Command Module from the Service module SIM bay.

Later “TK” retrieved the Mapping camera film cassette.

APOLLO 17

Artist depiction of the Trans-Earth EVA TV coverage

All three Apollo J-series missions (15, 16 and 17) conducted CSM EVA’s on the way back to the Earth. This was necessary to recover film packages from the Service Module SIM bay. The Westinghouse field-sequential color camera was mounted as shown in the drawing to cover each of the EVA’s.

The sixth and final Apollo visit to the surface of the Moon was the most productive of all. All of the primary mission objectives were met. The astronauts used the Rover to travel some 22 miles (35 km) around the Taurus-Littrow valley. The total length of the lunar stay was just short of 75 hours or just over three Earth days. The GCTA color television broadcasts totaled nearly 22 hours during three EVA periods. There were no problems experienced with the TV camera or its associated ground controlled pan and tilt unit.

The LRV and Harrison Schmitt near the large rock at EVA 2, Station 6

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A comparison between a Hasselblad photograph and a TV image, both taken after the flag raising

During the first EVA Jack Schmitt carries the ALSEP package out to the placement point

Gene Cernan gets ready to place a Heat Flow sensor after drilling and inserting the sensor casing.

After a misplaced hammer ripped off part of the right read fender during EVA 1, the crew works to install a juryrigged extension made from a map and “duct� tape.

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Jack and Gene search for samples during EVA 2

During the travel between EVA stations pieces of lunar dirt and dust was thrown up onto the front of the GTCA camera lens. In this sequence of TV screen captures

Gene Cernan unveils the Apollo 17 plaque

Gene Cernan gets ready to stow the Hasselblad camera with a 500 mm lens after a telescopic pan.

Gene Cernan uses a small round brush to remove the accumulated dirt and dust from the front of the camera lens.

The crew salutes NASA Administrator Dr. Fletcher

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Apollo 17 LM ascent stage engine ignition!

The performance of the Ground Controlled Television Assembly (GCTA) and the Lunar Communications Relay Unit (LCRU) was nearly flawless during the Apollo 17 stay in the TaurusLittrow region on the Moon. The Rover color TV camera continued to operate for at least 27

hours after the Challenger liftoff at GET 188:01:36 when it was used to observe the detonation of Explosive Package Nr. 7. Some time after this the LCRU suffered an over-temperature failure preventing further use of the camera.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

S:

This discussion of the Apollo television systems would not be possible without the contributions of the following people: Charles Caillouet, former JSC television engineer Paul Coan, former JSC Television System Manager Paul was a key source of information about Apollo spacecraft television systems. Check his very detailed NASA Technical Note TN-D-7476 published near the end of the Apollo program in 1973.

Mike Dinn, former Honeysuckle Creek MSFN Assistant Station Director Dwight Elledge, former Taft Broadcasting television Engineer, Houston MSC Ed Fendell. former JSC Apollo Flight Controller Ken Glover, ALSJ Contributor Olin Graham, retired JSC Manager Mark Gray, Spacecraft Films Nearly all of the television screen captures used in this paper were obtained from Spacecraft Films excellent and comprehensive Apollo DVD series.

Dick Holl, former MSFN Slow Scan Converter engineer Eric Jones, ALSJ Editor

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Apollo 17 LM descent stage remains on the Moon

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Stan Lebar, retired Westinghouse Lunar Camera Program Manager Stan made available many documents and photographs he collected during his many years of association with Westinghouse.

Hamish Lindsay, former Honeysuckle Creek MSFN Station technician John Lowry, cofounder Image Transform Colin Mackellar, Honeysuckle Creek Webpage Editor Dick Nafzger, GSFC Television Engineer Larkin Niemyer, former Westinghouse lunar camera engineer Sam Russell, former RCA Astronautics television engineer John Sarkissian, Operations Scientist, Parkes Observatory John Saxon, former Honeysuckle Creek MSFN Station Operations Supervisor Gary Sealoft, Johnson Space Center Archive Ed Tarkington, former JSC television engineer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Longview, one of two Corona Project recovery ships.

Bill Wood was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, in 1936. In 1944, his family relocated to Southern California to work in the war plants. He joined the USAF at age 19 as a guided missile technician in 1955. He finished his four-year enlistment at the Edwards AFB Rocket Engine Test Laboratory as an instrumentation technician working with Atlas and Thor missiles when they were test-fired.

In September 1966, he transferred to the Goddard Space Flight Center, near Washington, D.C., to work as an Apollo Unified S-band systems advisor on the Manned Space Flight Network support team. After 18 months, he transferred to the Goldstone MSFN station, serving as a Unified S-band crew supervisor. This included all of the manned Apollo missions from Apollo 7 through Apollo 17. In 1973, he became a station crew supervisor and supported the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz manned missions.

In 1960, after a short stint at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an instrumentation technician with smaller rocket engines, Bill shifted into satellite tracking with the then-secret Corona project. He was a telemetry technician on the USAF launch support ship, USNS Pvt. Joe E. Mann.

He tracked most of the early "Discoverer" missions during launch phase along the coast of Mexico, on Tern Island (between Oahu and Midway Islands), and on the USNS

In 1978, when Bendix regained the Deep Space Network contract, Bill transferred to the Goldstone DSN facility where he worked as the Systems Engineer responsible for the maintenance of all technical facilities at Goldstone.

He retired in 1988, but continued to work full time as a consultant to the Deep Space Network until 1994.

Bill now lives in Barstow, California, spending time on historical research, sound recording restoration, digital photography and amateur radio.

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CALL FOR PAPERS & EDITORIAL COMMENTS The Proceedings of the Radio Club of America is known for bringing you a wide mix of papers, ranging from sophisticated technical material to historical surveys of subjects related to electronic communications. RCA also is known for fostering discussion and sharing the viewpoints of its members. RCA is therefore issuing a call for papers and editorial comments for publication in upcoming issues of the Proceedings.

• Antennas and supporting structures (i.e., towers) • Broadband communications • Broadcast

The Proceedings is published semi-annually, and has been issued since 1914. The Proceedings is considered to be the first publication geared to promoting and sharing the intellectual development of all aspects of radio and wireless communications.

Coverage has expanded to include relevant articles encompassing science, technology development, marketing and regulatory topics. We seek articles from knowledgeable engineers, professionals, academics and amateurs who are participating in building future applications, as well as those who want to document the history of relevant technologies.

• Cellular telephony

As a fellow reader of the Proceedings, we would like you to author an article or editorial for publication. We welcome “early work,” even if it is still in the process of being drafted. RCA offers a unique opportunity for you to get an early reaction to important work now underway in wireless communications. It is also a unique opportunity to air your views, inviting commentary and response from the membership.

• Robotics

Please submit an abstract (1-3 paragraphs) including the title, author(s) and contact information, a synopsis of the material to be published, and a note as to why you think the subject is interesting or important to the wireless industry. Authors of papers selected for publication in the Proceedings may be given an opportunity to present at one of the RCA’s upcoming events, such as the annual Technical Symposium. (Note: participants are responsible for their own travel expenses to RCA events.)

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We seek interesting or important technical articles, editorials and discussion pieces in any of the following areas:

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• FirstNet • Ham (amateur) radio • Land mobile radio • Long-Term Evolution (LTE) • Military communications • Regulatory topics

• Satellites • 4G/5G Cellular • Semiconductors, LED or other devices supporting wireless communications • Any other wireless/radio technologies

Please send abstracts for articles and editorials to be published in the Proceedings to: John Facella at pantherpinesconsulting@gmail.com with copies to David Bart at jbart1964@gmail.com.

Please send abstracts for potential presentation topics at RCA events to: John Facella at TechSymp2018@radioclubofamerica.org.

For general questions about RCA, an article idea or submission, please contact Amy Beckham at Amy@radioclubofAmerica.org.

2019 SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

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There’s more! Networking Event Sponsorships, Lanyards, Awards, etc. The RCA is offering a variety of new sponsorships in 2019 which can give your company recognition and business opportunities. We can also create a custom sponsorship that meets your needs. Radio Club of America is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization, therefore, your sponsorship can qualify for a tax-deduction. Please consult with your tax advisor for specific information.

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BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL

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CAPITAL AREA COMMUNICATIONS Stephen J. Shaver, Project Manager 4120 Swatara Drive Harrisburg, PA, 17113 PHONE: (717) 561-0800 CELL: (717) 645-0086 FAX: (717) 561-9805 steves@cacradio.com www.cacradio.com

Wireless Communication Systems Solutions Provider

JACOBS Margaret J. Lyons, PE, PMP Senior RF/Communications Engineer 100 Walnut Ave, Suite 604 Clark, NJ 07066 PHONE: (732) 396-2253 CELL: (908) 4030171 margaret.lyons@jacobs.com www.jacobs.com

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DH SALES GROUP LLC

PO Box 5680 Lago Vista, TX 78645 CELL: (512) 751-5472 TOLL FREE: (800) 966-3357 FAX: (512) 267-7760 dhlago@aol.com www.dhsalesgroup.biz

Independent Manufacturers Representatives and Consultative Manufacturers Representative

KIRMUSSAUDIO DIV OF KIRMUSS & ASSOCIATES, LLC Charles Kirmuss, Founder, Principal 51 West 84th Ave., Suite 301 Denver, Co. 80260 PHONE: (303) 263-6353 FAX: (303) 862-7170 ckirmuss@frontier.net www.kirmussaudio.com

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BLUE WING Andy Maxymillian, PMP, Principal Consultant 235 Summer Hill Drive Gilbertsville, PA 19525 PHONE: (610) 473-2171 CELL: (610) 316-2660 FAX: (610) 473-2536 andrew.maxymillian@bluewing.com www.bluewing.com

Consultant Services

INFINITY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES/WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGIES DIRECT A DIV. OF KIRMUSS & ASSOCIATES, LLC, SINCE 1979

Charles Kirmuss, Founder, Principal 51 West 84th Ave., Suite 301 Denver, Co. 80260 PHONE: (303) 263-6353 ckirmuss@frontier.net www.wwtechnologiesdirect.com Radio pioneer, Director of RCA and Rampart Search & Rescue: Custom solutions & products for the Public Safety, Search & Rescue and Military markets.

Proud supporter & sponsor of RCA’s Youth Program.

LEONARDO William P. Fredrickson 11300 W. 89th Street Overland Park, KS 66214 PHONE: (913) 495-2614 CELL: (913) 909-4492 Bill.fredrickson@ leonardocompany-us.com www.leonardocc.com

Land Mobile Radio Manufacturer: DMR, P25, Tetra

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL

DIRECTORY PANTHER PINES CONSULTING John Facella, P.E., BSEE, MBA, Principal PHONE: (978) 799-8900 pantherpinesconsulting@gmail.com www.pantherpinesconsulting.com

Communications & Management Consulting

TSR CONSULTING ® Dr. Theodore S. Rappaport, P.E., Ph.D PO BOX 888 Riner, VA 24149

Technical consulting, engineering and design services in the field of wired and wireless communications systems, equipment and devices.

MASSIVELY BROADBAND ®

RFI AMERICAS

TOWER INNOVATIONS, INC.

Sean Johnson, President 2023 Case Pkwy Twinsburg, OH, 44087 PHONE: (330) 486-0706 x302 CELL: (330) 541-6585 FAX: (330) 486-0705 sean.johnson@rfi.com.au www.rfiamericas.com

Bruce R. McIntyre, President 107 Dunbar Ave., Suite E Oldsmar, FL 34677 PHONE: (813) 818-8766 CELL: (727) 439-3683 FAX: (813) 925-0999 bruce@towerinnovationsinc.com www.towerinnovactionsinc.com

Manufacturer of antennas and RF conditioning equipment for LMR

Wireless consulting, Communications structures

TWR

UTILITY TELECOM CONSULTING GROUP

Lauren Libby, International President 300 Greyson Drive Cary NC 27511 PHONE: (719) 331-7051 llibby@twr.org www.twr.org

RF and Digital Content to 190 Countries in 230 languages every day

George R. Stoll, President 9850 S. Maryland Pkwy Las Vegas, NV, 89183 PHONE: (303) 840-2878 CELL: (303) 475-0414 FAX: (303) 840-1129 george.stoll@utcg.com www.utcg.com

Consulting Engineers

WIRELESS TOWERS, INC. Larry Shaefer, President 115 N. Walker St. Angleton, TX 77515 PHONE: (713) 522-7000 CELL: (713) 526-8000 Lshaefer@sbcglobal.net www.wireless-towers.com

Texas Tower Site Leasing

YOUR AD HERE Would you like to be listed in the next issue of the Proceedings?

Contact RCA at (612) 405-2012 or Amy@radioclubofamerica.org to reserve space.

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RCA CALENDAR

EVENTS

CALENDAR

Visit the event calendar on the RCA website for the most up-to-date event information.

RCA EVENTS

INDUSTRY EVENTS

2018 RCA BANQUET AND TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM November 16, 2019 New York City

DAYTON HAMVENTION

CONNECTIVITY EXPO

May 17–19, 2019 Xenia, OH

May 20–23, 2019 Orlando, FL

APCO INTERNATIONAL

AWA ANNUAL CONVENTION

August 11–14, 2019 Baltimore, MD

August 13–17, 2019 Rochester, NY

AGL LOCAL SUMMIT September 19, 2019 Washington DC

AGL LOCAL SUMMIT November 14, 2019 Dallas, TX

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS AMERICAS October 22–24, 2019 Los Angeles, CA

IWCE 2020 March 30–April 3, 2020 Las Vegas, NV

SUPPORT RCA WITH A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTION Help RCA continue its mission of advancing wireless art and science for the betterment of society by making a tax-deductible donation today! RCA believes in the future of the industry and your contribution will help us with the important work of encouraging the next generation of wireless pioneers and entrepreneurs. Consider making a donation in someone’s honor as a memorial or gift.

Donate online at www.radioclubofamerica.org/donate-to-rca/ or call us at (612) 405-2102 to contribute.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO SUPPORT RCA The Radio Club of America provides many opportunities to support the organization and its activities. Sponsors can make specific requests or provide funding for general operations.

INDIVIDUAL SUSTAINING DONATIONS Make a difference in how quickly we progress with our many initiatives for young people, young wireless professionals and those in established careers. We encourage any member who is impressed with the operations of the club to make a tax-deductible donation earmarked to sustaining operations. Donations to support our day-to-day operations are critical to our future as an organization. You can also select RCA as your full or partial beneficiary on an IRA, so funds are tax-free to RCA, or set up a monthly donation through a credit card or ACH withdrawal.

CORPORATE SPONSORSHIPS AT SPECIFIC EVENTS Networking is a key reason many of our members get involved and stay active with RCA. Breakfasts, cocktail parties and other social events can be underwritten by sponsors who receive promotional considerations for their donations and heightened visibility to the membership.

3 YEAR SUSTAINING CORPORATE SPONSORS There is a unique set of advantages to corporate sponsors who participate in our three-year program. See our summary of benefits by level of sponsorship.

SCHOLARSHIPS Donate to an existing scholarship fund or create your own and you will be supporting university students pursuing wireless communications as a career.

YOUTH ACTIVITIES The Youth Activities program brings the excitement of learning about amateur radio and vivid lessons in science, math and electronics to middle and high school children in this unique and innovative program sponsored by RCA.

HOW YOU CAN APPLY YOUR DONATIONS A variety of funds are available to support specific goals of the initial donors and RCA operations. Please contact RCA for more information on these opportunities.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

General Club Operations (unrestricted) Archive Preservation Barone-DiBlasi-Facella Biggs Brownson DeMello Award Continuing Education Dettra, Finch General Grants in Aid Goldwater Grebe Gunther Legacy Fund Link Meyer Meyerson Poppele Tom Sorley Memorial Fund to RCA Youth Activities Richard G. Somers Youth Edu Fund

RCA is classified as a 501(c)(3) organization under IRS rules. Contributions may be tax deductible in the United States depending on a person’s individual tax situation.

HOW TO SPONSOR/DONATE The RCA donations form is on the website. Please contact our Executive Secretary, Amy Beckham, for more information on any of these opportunities. She can be reached at 612.405.2012 or amy@radioclubofamerica.org.

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SHARE YOUR RCA STORY

SHOP AMAZON & HELP RCA

We had a record number of new members last year help us continue this momentum by spreading the word about why you belong to the oldest, most prestigious group of wireless professionals in the world! Direct potential members to the Why RCA? page of the website to learn what sets us apart.

Amazon has a program called Amazon Smile, through which Amazon will donate .5% of a qualified purchase to a charitable organization of your choice. To designate proceeds towards RCA, go to smile.amazon.com and use your Amazon login.

You will be asked to select a charitable organization (Radio Club of America) and start shopping. It is an easy way to help the Radio Club and at the same time get a great deal on amazon.com. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you will continue to receive the benefits of your Prime membership.

Signing up for RCA Membership has never been easier! Use the new online membership application to submit your information in a matter of minutes.

HAS YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION CHANGED?

HEADQUARTERS OFFICE

If you have recently changed your address, email, or phone number, please send us an update.

ADDRESS: 13570 Grove Drive #302 Maple Grove, MN 55311

Email amy@radioclubofamerica.org or call (612) 405-2012.

PHONE: (612) 405-2012 EMAIL: amy@radioclubofamerica.org WEBSITE: www.radioclubofamerica.org

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