Topic for Wednesday July 27:    My Mobile Wires-X PDN Station - KC1HHK

My Mobile Wires-X PDN Station

I want to share with you my recent project to go mobile with a Wires-X Mobile Portable Digital Node Station.  This station set up was designed to be used in my vehicle, which has a dedicated mobile radio installed, a Yaesu FTM-400XDR.

The station is hosted by a Yaesu FT2 DR handheld.  This radio is directly connected to a basic laptop running Windows 10 and the Yaesu Wires-X software version 1.53.  The cable connection is done using a Yaesu SCU-19.

The internet connection to the Wires-x system is done using my iphone “personal hotspot” which is wireless.

Once connected, I can visit Wires-X rooms like America-Link or many others. 

At my QTH, I also have a dedicated HRI200/Room called the Boston-Link.  If I have this room open, I can access it from my Mobile station.  If I am traveling anywhere in the world, I could connect back to the Boston Link and through the room could speak to anyone locally that could connect via RF or the internet.

When using the station from inside the vehicle with the FTM-400, the RF distance is a matter of feet thus the TX power is set to low.  I can also use my FT-5DR handheld and extend my range TX/RX outside the vehicle by a combination of antennas and power.

The laptop is a basic model (Evolve III) with the unique capability to charge using 12 volts.  This is perfect for use in the car with power coming directly from the battery using a modified charging cable outfitted with Anderson power pole connectors or from a portable battery system such as Bioenno or others similar.

Net Discussion Questions:

1. Are you familiar with the Wires-X digital system?

2. Do you have an interest in this type of set up?

3. Would it make sense to have a presentation at the club to demo the system?

Topic for Monday July 25:    Bikini Atoll, Crash of the Concorde, and.... the Charleston Chew

Topic for Wednesday July 20:    LUNAR LANDING – 53 YEARS AGO

LUNAR LANDING – 53 YEARS AGO

Going to the Moon Was Hard — But the Benefits Are Huge, for All of Us

53 Years ago, on this day, July 20, 1969, the Eagle lunar landing module, carrying U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (“Buzz”) Aldrin, landed on the Moon, and several hours later Armstrong became the first person to set foot on its surface.

Thanks in part to the massive, 400,000-person effort that put astronauts on the Moon, our knowledge of the solar system has increased dramatically in the decades since. The many challenges NASA overcame forced the agency and its partners to devise new inventions and techniques that spread into public life, many of which are taken for granted today.

As NASA prepares to return to the Moon by 2024, the space agency is mapping out the next round of technological advances needed to establish sustainable operations by 2028 and send future crewed missions to Mars. If history is any guide, many of these technologies will go on to become part of day-to-day life on Earth, just as many Apollo inventions already have.

The Computers

The onboard computers for Apollo—one that flew the command module to the moon and back to earth, and another that flew the lunar module from orbit around the moon to a safe landing, then back up into orbit—were the smallest, fastest, most nimble computers ever created for their era.

Designed and programmed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the computers were marvels of their time—and a view into the computing future. In an era when a small computer was the size of three refrigerators, lined up next to each other, the Apollo flight computer was the size of a briefcase. At a time when computers on earth required punch cards to work, and hours to get results back, the Apollo flight computer had a keyboard and worked instantly. In an era when people using the computers simply submitted their punch cards, and waited for the results from computer operators, the astronauts ran the Apollo flight computers themselves.

But in the mid- and late-1960s, when the Apollo computers were designed, programmed and built, they were in fact just a few years ahead of our ability to manufacture their circuitry. Computer chips and computer memory were in their infancy—indeed, the Apollo computer was the first computer of any significance to use integrated circuits, computer chips.

The Apollo computers were designed with a kind of memory called “core rope memory.” It was the densest computer memory available at that time—between 10 and 100 times more efficient, in terms of weight and space, of any other memory available, absolutely essential on a spacecraft where weight and space were always at a premium.

But core rope memory suffered from one small problem: It had to be made by hand.

Each wire representing a 1 or a 0 in the computer program had to be positioned with absolute precision, by a person, using a needle, and wire instead of thread. A wire threaded through the center of a tiny ring-shaped magnet was a one. A wire threaded to the outside of that magnet was a zero.

And so, the most remarkable computer of its era—not just a space-age computer, but a spaceship flight computer—had circuitry that was hand-woven, by women, many of them former textile workers, in a Raytheon factory in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The Apollo guidance computer contained just 73 kilobytes of memory—far less computing power than a typical microwave oven today. In all, it contained 589,824 ones and zeros of computer programming—and every single one and zero, every single wire, had to be positioned exactly correctly, or some part of the computer’s sophisticated flight program wouldn’t work right.

Because the women in Waltham weren’t just weaving the memory of the computer, but literally weaving the programming instructions directly—almost all of the Apollo computer’s memory was fixed—and woven by those women.  It took eight weeks to weave the memory for a single flight computer.  For Apollo, the software was in fact hardware.

Here is a small selection of Apollo technologies still in use 50 years after the first Moon landing.

Digital Flight Controls

Maybe the clearest illustration of Apollo’s contributions to the state of the art is the digital fly-by-wire control system that guided its path. The technology was unheard-of at the time, but it is now integral to airliners and is even found in most cars.

Freeze Dried Food

Apollo astronauts were first to have hot water, which made rehydrating FREEZE DRIED foods easier and improved the food's taste. These astronauts were also the first to use the "spoon bowl," a plastic container that could be opened and its contents eaten with a spoon.

The Spacesuits

The Apollo spacesuits were high-tech marvels: 21 layers of nested fabric, strong enough to stop a micrometeorite, yet flexible enough to allow the astronauts to do all the work they needed to do on the moon. The spacesuits were the work of Playtex, the company that gave America the “Cross Your Heart” bra in the 1960s. Playtex had sold itself to NASA with the somewhat cheeky observation that the company was very familiar with garments that had to be both form-fitting and flexible.  In fact, Playtex’s industrial division proved to be an inspired choice. Some of the layers of fabric in the suits were adapted directly from materials Playtex used in its bras and girdles.

But assembling the spacesuits was considered such delicate and critical work that it was done by hand, each layer sewn by workers, brought over to Playtex’s industrial division from its consumer-product side. Every stitch had to be perfect if the spacesuits were to perform correctly—and protect the astronauts—in the unforgiving environment of the moon.

The insulation has been used in just about every NASA spacecraft and spacesuit since its creation, and it has become a ubiquitous spinoff found in clothing, firefighting and camping gear, building insulation, cryogenic storage, magnetic resonance imaging machines and particle colliders, to name a few applications.

That division of Playtex is now an independent company called ILC Dover. Fifty years later, it still makes all NASA’s spacesuits.

Quake-Proofing

A technology that started with Apollo-era shock absorbers and computers now protects buildings and bridges around the world from earthquakes.

For decades, the company has made fluidic shock absorbers using the same technology, which now reinforce hundreds of buildings, bridges, and other structures around the world, particularly in quake-prone regions.

Net Discussion Questions:

1. Did you know about the “core rope memory”?

2. Massachusetts entities like Raytheon, Draper Labs and MIT contributed heavily to the effort, do you know of others?

3. What other technologies can you think of that came from the Apollo Moon landings and other space programs?

Topic for Monday July 18:    On This Day: Ty and Nadia...and....Outdoors in Summer

Topic for Wednesday July 13:    The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Revealed

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed primarily to conduct infrared astronomy. As the most powerful telescope ever launched into space, its greatly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity will allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Webb's First Deep Field is the first operational image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, depicting the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, 4.6 billion light-years from Earth. Revealed to the public on 11 July 2022, the composite image was taken by the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and covers a tiny area of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Thousands of galaxies are visible in the image, which is the highest-resolution image of the early universe ever taken.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) conducts infrared astronomy. Webb's First Deep Field was taken by the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and is a composite produced from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours. The photo achieved depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope's deepest fields, which took weeks. The spacecraft has been orbiting Earth's second Lagrange point (L2), about 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 mi) from Earth since 24 January 2022. At L2, the gravitational pulls of both the Sun and the Earth keeps the telescope's motion around the Sun synchronized with Earth's.

SMACS 0723 is a galaxy cluster of sky visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere, and has often been examined by Hubble and other telescopes in search of the deep past.

Scientific results

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. Webb's image covers a patch of sky with an angular size approximately equal to a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone on the ground. Many of the cosmological entities depicted have undergone notable redshift due to the expansion of space over the extreme distance of the light radiating from them.

The combined mass of the galaxy cluster acted as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb's NIRCam brought the distant galaxies into sharp focus, revealing tiny, faint structures that had never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.

Significance

The deep field is the oldest and highest resolution image of the Universe ever taken.

Webb's First Deep Field is the first full false color image from the JWST, and the highest-resolution infrared view of the universe yet captured. The image reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast universe, and Webb's sharp near-infrared view brought out faint structures in extremely distant galaxies, offering the most detailed view of the early universe to date. Thousands of galaxies, which include the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared, have appeared in Webb's view for the first time.

It was first revealed to the public during a White House event on 11 July 2022 by U.S. president Joe Biden.

Net Discussion Questions:

1. Are you familiar with the new James Webb Space Telescope?

2. How is it different from the Hubble Telescope?

Hubble - small portion of infrared spectrum, primarily used for ultra -violet and visible spectrum

Webb – primarily in the infrared spectrum with some capabilities in the visible spectrum range

3. Why are infrared observations important to astronomy? Stars and planets that are just forming lie hidden behind cocoons of dust that absorb visible light. (The same is true for the very center of our galaxy.) However, infrared light emitted by these regions can penetrate this dusty shroud and reveal what is inside.

Topics for Monday July 11:    Yagi v. Vertical ... and This Day in History

Topic for Wednesday July 6:    VACATION !!!!!!!!!

A vacation (American English) or holiday (British English) is either a leave of absence from a regular job or an instance of leisure travel away from home. People often take a vacation during specific holiday observances or for specific festivals or celebrations. Vacations are often spent with friends or family. Vacations may include a specific trip or journey, usually for the purpose of recreation or tourism.

A person may take a longer break from work, such as a sabbatical, gap year, or career break.

The concept of taking a vacation is a recent invention and has developed through the last two centuries. Historically, the idea of travel for recreation was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford.  In the Puritan culture of early America, taking a break from work for reasons other than weekly observance of the Sabbath was frowned upon. However, the modern concept of vacation was led by a later religious movement encouraging spiritual retreat and recreation. The notion of breaking from work periodically took root among the middle and working class.

Vacation policy

In nearly all countries worldwide, there are minimum requirements as to the annual leave that must be afforded to an employee.

Even in the United States, where no federal requirements as to minimum annual leave exist, many large corporations have vacation policies, some allowing employees to take weeks off and some even allowing unlimited vacation.  Unlimited vacation arrangements may nonetheless come with implicit expectations, for instance, it may be implied that an employee should not take more than about the average number of vacation days taken by others. They normally also have the consequence that employees who leave the company receive no monetary compensation for leave days not taken.

According to the U.S. Travel Association, Americans collectively did not use 662 million vacation days in 2016.  More than half of all working people in the United States forfeited paid time off at the end of the year. Two-thirds of people still do work while they are on vacation.

Net discussion question 

What are your vacation plans this year?

Types of vacations:

o   Family vacation

o   Guys /gals weekend

o   Hunting or sporting events

o   Camping

Do you use up all your time every year?