Author: Bill_L

When was the first EME (Earth Moon Earth) accomplished
A. 1940
B. 1946
C. 1951
D. 1954

Below is from History.nasa.gov Click here for the whole chapter

 

Project Diana  

Typical was the first successful radar experiment aimed at the Moon. That experiment was performed with Signal Corps equipment at the Corps’ Evans Signal Laboratory, near Belmar, New Jersey, under the direction of John H. DeWitt, Jr., Laboratory Director. DeWitt was born in Nashville and attended Vanderbilt University Engineering School for two years. Vanderbilt did not offer a program in electrical engineering, so DeWitt dropped out in order to satisfy his interest in broadcasting and amateur radio. After building Nashville’s first broadcasting station, in 1929 DeWitt joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories technical staff in New York City, where he designed radio broadcasting transmitters. He returned to Nashville in 1932 to become Chief Engineer of radio station WSM. Intrigued by Karl Jansky’s discovery of “cosmic noise,” DeWitt built a radio telescope and searched for radio signals from the Milky Way.

In 1940, DeWitt attempted to bounce radio signals off the Moon in order to study the Earth’s atmosphere. He wrote in his notebook: “It occurred to me that it might be possible to reflect ultrashort waves from the moon. If this could be done it would open up wide possibilities for the study of the upper atmosphere. So far as I know no one has ever [7] sent waves off the earth and measured their return through the entire atmosphere of the earth.”¹⁸

On the night of 20 May 1940, using the receiver and 80-watt transmitter configured for radio station WSM, DeWitt tried to reflect 138-MHz (2-meter) radio waves off the Moon, but he failed because of insufficient receiver sensitivity. After joining the staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in Whippany, New Jersey, in 1942, where he worked exclusively on the design of a radar antenna for the Navy, DeWitt was commissioned in the Signal Corps and was assigned to serve as Executive Officer, later as Director, of Evans Signal Laboratory.

On 10 August 1945, the day after the United States unleashed a second atomic bomb on Japan, military hostilities between the two countries ceased. DeWitt was not demobilized immediately, and he began to plan his pet project, the reflection of radio waves off the Moon. He dubbed the scheme Project Diana after the Roman mythological goddess of the Moon, partly because “the Greek [sic] mythology books said that she had never been cracked.”

In September 1945, DeWitt assembled his team: Dr. Harold D. Webb, Herbert P. Kauffman, E. King Stodola, and Jack Mofenson. Dr. Walter S. McAfee, in the Laboratory’s Theoretical Studies Group, calculated the reflectivity coefficient of the Moon. Members of the Antenna and Mechanical Design Group, Research Section, and other Laboratory groups contributed, too.

No attempt was made to design major components specifically for the experiment. The selection of the receiver, transmitter, and antenna was made from equipment already on hand, including a special crystal-controlled receiver and transmitter designed for the Signal Corps by radio pioneer Edwin H. Armstrong. Crystal control provided frequency stability, and the apparatus provided the power and bandwidth needed. The relative velocities of the Earth and the Moon caused the return signal to differ from the transmitted signal by as much as 300 Hz, a phenomenon known as Doppler shift. The narrow-band receiver permitted tuning to the exact radio frequency of the returning echo. As DeWitt later recalled: “We realized that the moon echoes would be very weak so we had to use a very narrow receiver bandwidth to reduce thermal noise to tolerable levels….We had to tune the receiver each time for a slightly different frequency from that sent out because of the Doppler shift due to the earth’s rotation and the radial velocity of the moon at the time.”¹⁹

The echoes were received both visually, on a nine-inch cathode-ray tube, and acoustically, as a 180 Hz beep. The aerial was a pair of “bedspring” antennas from an SCR-271 stationary radar positioned side by side to form a 32-dipole array antenna and mounted on a 30-meter (100-ft) tower. The antenna had only azimuth control; it had not been practical to secure a better mechanism. Hence, experiments were limited to the rising and setting of the Moon.

[9] The Signal Corps tried several times, but without success. “The equipment was very haywire,” recalled DeWitt. Finally, at moonrise, 11:48 A.M., on 10 January 1946, they aimed the antenna at the horizon and began transmitting. Ironically, DeWitt was not present: “I was over in Belmar having lunch and picking up some items like cigarettes at the drug store (stopped smoking 1952 thank God).” 20 The first signals were detected at 11:58 A.M., and the experiment was concluded at 12:09 P.M., when the Moon moved out of the radar’s range. The radio waves had taken about 2.5 seconds to travel from New Jersey to the Moon and back, a distance of over 800,000 km. The experiment was repeated daily over the next three days and on eight more days later that month.

The ISS electrical supply is split into 2 supplies, 120 volts 60 cycle for the American equipment and 220 volt 50 cycle for the European,Russian and Asian equipment… Answer A. Yes or B. No
Answer B.. No… The voltage is 120 volts DC for the American side, on the Russian side it is 28 and 120 volts DC
Tech sheet Below

ISS-Electrical

During World War II, did the U.S. Navy operate two aircraft carriers in the Great Lakes for training purposes… Answer … A. True … B. False

Both Carriers began life as Great Lakes Side Paddle wheel Steamers The Wolverine IX-64 (original name Seeandbee) running between Buffalo and Cleaveland and the other Sable IX-81 (original name Greater Buffalo). The 2 were berthed at the Navy Pier in Chicago and were known as the Corn Belt Fleet. Together, Sable and Wolverine trained 17,820 pilots in 116,000 carrier landings. Of these, 51,000 landings were on Sable alone. One of the pilots qualified on Sable was a 20-year-old Lieutenant, junior grade, future president George H. W. Bush.

For more and also pictures USS Wolverine (Wikipedia) and the USS Sable (Wikipedia) and an article about both at at Military Now…

Did the ARRL ever have anything to do with a Promotional film about Amateur radio… answer … Yes … or No …
Answer is Yes… The Promotional video called “This is HAM Radio” is produced and directed by award-winning Hollywood producer and amateur radio legend Dave Bell in cooperation with the American Radio Relay League circa 1970.

War Of the Worlds radio drama’s original broadcast was October 30th 1938, adapted from a book that was originally published in 1898: The book was written by…. A) George Orson Welles …. B) Alfred Hitchcock … C) Herbert George Wells … D) Howard Koch
Answer is C… Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells was an English writer from the United Kingdom, the radio drama was written by Howard Koch and Orson Welles.

Authors: Howard Koch, H. G. Wells
Original release: October 30, 1938, 8 – 9 pm ET
Recording studio: Columbia Broadcasting Building

The Original Script is at the end of this post in PDF format

War of the Worlds book free online, you have 2 choices ones, the first link you can read in your browser and the second gives you multiple choices for download ( both are at Gutenberg)

Gutenberg Read in Browser

Gutenberg Other Formats

The Original Radio Broadcast

A Documentary on the making of War of the Worlds Radio Episode

Orson Wells and H.G. Welles Meet

War_of_Worlds_script

Call signs ZL1ZLD and ZL1ZLF are for A) Auckland or B) Musick Point, both are in New Zealand
Answer is B Musick Point, they have several amateur radio stations at Musick Point, including high-frequency transceivers with directional antennas, various VHF and UHF repeaters and our specialty, a 630-metre radio telegraph station.The whole story and what they are up to follow this link to the Musick Point Website

The HeathKit HG10 B VFO covered 80 meters to 1.25 meters… Answer Yes or No
Answer is No… the HG10 B covers 80 meters to 2 meters and if you have one and need the VFO display one is available from HeathKit…

hg-10b