Telstar 50th Anniversary Special Event July 10th only

[W2DAD]

On Tuesday July 10th from 11am ~ 5pm, the AT&T Middletown club will setup a special event station.
We will be operating with call-sign "W2NFA" from the site where the remnant background microwave
radiation from the “Big Bang” was first detected.

This location was also the receive site for the first Television broadcast via satellite test.
http://www.tvhistory.btinternet.co.uk/html/telstar.html


When: Tuesday July 10th, 2012
Where: Crawford Hill - Holmdel NJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Be...rd_Hill_NJ.jpg
Time : 11:00am ~ 17:00pm EDT
Bands : 15, 20 and 40 meters.
SSB: 7.275 MHz, 14.275 MHz, 21.325 MHz
CW: 7.040 MHz, 14.040 MHz, 21.040 MHz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKH-GijnAGk

A special anniversary certificate will be emailed back to all contacts.
QSL to:
AT&T
C/O Steve Wolkovitz – W2DAD
AT&T Amateur Radio Club President
stevenw@att.com

[KW0U]

Thanks for the event. Remember the first broadcast very well, and later visited the "big ear" site in Maine where a lot of Telstar's transmissions were received. Today not so many people may know of this important satellite--maybe the lovely organ tune named after it helps--but it accomplished a lot. Suddenly regular use of near space was open to the world, and communications were never the same again. If I get out of jury duty early I'll be listening for you.

[KF0G]

what? you arent working satellites? get some amsat folks in there. i will be at work, but i am sure others would love it. have fun, 73, cn81 jefferson state.

[KE2D]

In 1978 I worked on the official film for the Nobel Foundation. It was an honor to interview Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson who shared the physics prize that year along with Pyotr Kapitsa (he worked on something entirely different, but I don't recall what). One of the most memorable moments of my career is actually shooting a scene inside the receiver end of the folded horn they used there on that hill in Holmdel. We watched them recreate their work by pouring liquid helium into an insulated container which housed the front end of the receiver. This cooled it down to reduce thermal noise so they could search the sky. I think I was the only one on the crew who understood what they were doing and why they were doing it. What I learned from ham radio gave me this insight.

As I recall hearing them tell the story, they were actually working on another weak signal project and needed to calibrate the antenna. Despite the fact that they had tried to eliminate all possible sources for the noise (including some birds nest in the front of the antenna), and cooling the front end as low as possible, no matter where they pointed the horn, into the darkest abysses of the universe, in every possible direction, there was a background noise level they could not account for. Eventually their research led them to the inescapable conclusion that the noise was the leftover residual energy from the big bang. Subsequent calculations bore this out. The noise level they found is 3 degrees Kelvin.

I doubt I'll be able to get home in time to make a QSO but have fun and thanks for doing this.
KE2D - Bob

[WB7TVS]

Here's the link to "Telstar" by the British band The Tornados! Loved it when it came out in Aug 1962. Does anyone remember Echo! I used to look into the night sky and watch it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuA-fqKCiAE

Bruce
WB7TVS

[N6RLS]

Here's the link to "Telstar" by the British band The Tornados! Loved it when it came out in Aug 1962. Does anyone remember Echo! I used to look into the night sky and watch it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuA-fqKCiAE

Bruce
WB7TVS

Remember it? (Telstar - Tornados) - it was my favorite record for years ... Joe Meek was the producer of that and many other great records... The Tornados were the first British band to have a #1 hit in the States - before the British Invasion even started.

[N6RLS]

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmSRf...eature=related) has a notation about the up/downlink frequencies used by Telstar - and other details:
The spacecraft weighed 171 pounds (the Delta capability was for a maximum payload of 180 pounds). The shape was a faceted sphere with a diameter of a little over 34 inches. Of six spacecraft built, two were launched. The solar cells provided just under 15 watts. The spacecraft was spin stabilized using the same rate as the third stage (typically 200 rpm) avoiding a despin mechanism. The receive and transmit antennas consisted of belts of small apertures (72 and 48 respectively) around the middle of the spacecraft resulting in a circularly polarized antenna with an isotropic pattern around the equator of the spacecraft. Frequencies used were 6,390 MHz uplink and 4,170 MHz downlink. Telstar was the first satellite to use a TWT amplifier since transistor technology at the time was not capable of the 3 W power output at the frequency required.

[KB3YIN]

Enjoyed vidio technoligy in 60s wow.New ham 3-2012 learnd something new thanks for contackt Pete 73s KB3YIN

[AE6JM]

I remember visiting my father as he was hand polishing a 70 foot diameter ring in the railroad yard in Dover, NJ. The ring was then shipped up to Andover, Maine, to become the base that the antenna rotated on. He worked for a company called McKiernan-Terry.

[AC0XB]

Thanks for pulling me out of the noise, guys. Glad to have the contact.
Richard, AC0XB