I worked at The Big Ear in the 1960 + era as W8JK's grad student and implemented what was called by the IEEE the first digital recording and processing system for radio astronomy. This was a time when strip chart recorders were the rule. Mind, almost everything used tubes still. Professor K. was a great man and very good to me. My love of antennas was enhanced when my father purchased a copy of Antennas (pub. 1950), which led to my asking to visit OSU when Prof K. visited U of Michigan - where his father was a professor. Visited OSU on Thanksgiving with my father (undergrads did not drive) and had a grand tour led by Prof. K - only day when I did not have classes. World has changed a lot. Amateur radio has been very important. 73 N8TT
Hi Mac, It would be foolhardy to underplay the achievements of Big Ear. IMO it is most unfortunate that the WOW 'signal' is all that is left in the common memory of the 'value' of the facility. Even younger radio astronomers fail to understand that many of the important DRS's were first detected and catalogued by Big Ear. At least in the US, the legacy of time is to erase the foundations of the past. :-0 I see this all the time, personally, when others publish on fractal antennas on stuff I published 25 years ago. I guess they assume I am dead and can't exactly complain as a result! I actually am asked (occasionally) nowadays if my 'father' really invented fractal antennas... like I am NC 'Jr', or something.... Reminds me of that Monty Python sketch--''I'm not dead yet..." Stay well Mac. 73 Chip W1YW
Interesting your visit was the weekend of the OSU and Michigan football game. Different variation but over the years there were signs in the OSU HAM station that the "WOW" signal decoded asked for tickets to an OSU/Michigan Football game.
It is funded for at least the next 4 years. Plus it rains way too much here to finish a game of golf.
Thought you might be interested in this - top image from 1988, bottom image from 2019. You can locate them by jumping on Google Earth and going to the coordinates in the image.
