Radio Astronomy - SETI, and Ham Radio

Science and space type stuff (by Peter)

Space travel and planetary science is an interest, based on the the belief that man belongs out there amongst the stars and that this is the next great frontier of human exploration. One day (sadly, probably not in our lifetime) we will get there and meet other star travellers. Both of us are members of the Planetary Society.

In the meantime there are serious science projects like SETI and other work carried out under the auspices of The Planetary Society (amongst others) looking for evidence of intelligent life on other planets.

Now that Peter has a decent radio (the NRD mentioned on my radio page) with coverage up to 2GHz, it might be nice to dabble in another interest, that is listening to the stars. In the workshop there is a small (tiny in this context) 2M dish that is surplus to requirement and thought I would set up a (very) modest amatuer SETI ground station. This will be an ongoing work and if I get anywhere with it I shall post the results here.

For those of you who aren't sure what SETI is, it is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. This was a project which really came to the fore in the US during the late 1970's and early 80's under the influence of a number of prominent astronomers and other scientists who managed to persuade the US government to provide some funding for it. That is not to say that the US are (or were) the only country involved but this is where it really "hit the headlines" and caught the public's interest.

Here are some links to further information on the SETI project and also the seti-league which is a huge resource to those who wish to activley participate in this work by either setting up thier own groundstation or helping others to do so.

• The SETI League Inc. - the support group for the ARGUS project - a network of small scale and amateur (in the non-professional instead of the unprofessional sense - ain't english a wonderfull language ;-( ) listening stations.
• The SETI institute - the co-ordinating body for SETI studies based in the US and founded in 1984.
• The Planetary Society has a SETI page.
• To demonstrate this is a truly international effort, the Seti Research & Community Development Institute in Australia and also the Australian Planetary Society.

One of the prime movers in getting this project and many other space exploration projects the public recognition it deserves was former Astronomer and popular scientist Carl Sagan who's many writings, lectures and popular TV series (Cosmos) inspired many to take up science and in particular Astronomy in both a professional and amateur capacity. He was a founder of The Planetary Society  (find out more about his life and work here and here)

 Any comments, or sugestions relating to SETI, mail to radioastronomer(at)starseeker.org

Radio and other related info.

Peters interest in radio goes back many years and as a child he used to build his own receivers under the tutalage of his maternal grandfather. He has been a member of the RSGB (Radio Society of Great Britain as an SWL for over 20 years) and his local radio society is the Worthing and Distrct Amateur Radio Club.

We curently own and operate a JRC NRD-545 with the optional UHF reciever board, temperature compensated oscillator and matching external speaker, and have found this to be an excelent and effective instrument. The DSP IF allows almost total flexibility of bandwidth, offset and filtering. This is connected to one of our computers via the RS-232 interface. One thing missed from our old Yaesu (FRG-7) is a preselector front end to "peak" up the band of interest and help with out of band rejection.- perhaps this is something that will be added in the form of an antenna tuner of some description at a future date.

The receiver is fed by a "shortened" wire dipole of our own design/construction (electricaly shortened with loading coils to aprox. 67 feet because of restricted space) which covers everything below 30Mhz (surprisingly well, considering....) and a military spec Dressler ARA-2000 active antenna for everthing above 30MHz.

We still have (but seldom use now) a Yaesu FRG-7 (much modified) used with a Datong FL2 active audio filter unit, Sony Pro-80 SW+VHF receiver/scanner and an ancient Soundair VHF (marine and PMR) band scanner, and various portable/wearable radios used when travelling. The old Yaesu is in storage, ready to pass on to the next generation if/when they arrive ;-).

When travelling Peter mainly uses a Sony SW-100, which for it's size and facilities is impossible to better. It is used with a wire dipole he made, which can be wound into a dispenser for ease of packing, that plugs into the external antena socket (he thought the supplied Sony unit that clipped onto the telescopic antenna a bit naff). He finds this unit very good for listening to various broadcast stations around the world, keeping track of the "world Service" and VOA as well as listening in to drilling rigs and seismic crews on SSB.

We have experimented with using the radio interfaced to my HP200LX pocket computer to provide "data mode" reception and decoding while away from home - but the lack of filtering, very fine tuning and slight drift in the SW-100 make this something of a challenge.

we use the excelent reference books published by Klingenfuss in Germany and WEB references such as Worldwide Utility News.

 Any comments, or sugestions relating to Ham Radio, mail to Condor(at)starseeker.org