How Britain Won the Space Race

Look out for the “Timeshift” documentary on BBC iPlayer that charts how Sir Bernard Lovell’s radio telescope was used by both the Americans and Russians during the Space Race.



The programme starts with the experiments using wartime surplus radar equipment to detect the reflections from the ionised trail that is formed as meteors penetrate the Earth’s upper atmosphere.  The radio observations were correlated against the visual observations made by volunteers lying on their backs in the open field.  From here, things became larger with a fixed dish made up from wire catenaries supported wartime surplus Army antenna masts, with what can only be described as a garden shed on stilts containing the receiving antennae at the focus – I’m not going to paraphrase the whole programme, but the 250ft diameter dish that was built was used to chart the early launches during the cold war when both sides were eager to demonstrate their ability to launch Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, with everything coming to a head during the Cuban Missile Crisis as one of the first Ballistic Missile Early Warning Systems (BMEWS) to be used by the British in the cold war.

The first part of exploring radio astronomy will probably follow the route of detecting the signals reflected by meteors, making use of the GRAVES radar in France – GRAVES is short for the Grand Réseau Adapté à la Veille Spatiale, which translates to Large Network Adapted to Space Watch.  What makes this radar ideal for amateur observations is that it transmits a continuous beam of signals from one site, whilst simultaneously receiving signals from a second geographically separated site elsewhere in France. Secondly, it transmits with sufficient power that it is possible to detect its reflections from the surface of the moon, and finally, it transmits on 143.050MHz, which lies just below the popular 2-metre amateur radio band, and hence I already have most of the equipment needed already to get started, so watch this space...

Repeat of WSPR Experiment from Barmby Tidal Barrier

To provide a comparison with the previous experiment, the WSPRLite was again setup from the Goole Radio and Electronics Society's portable location at Barmby Tidal Barrier.  Apart from changing the callsign back to G0VRM, the setup was identical.  This time, there was some grayline DX to the Canaries at approximately 8PM, otherwise the results were virtually identical.

WSPR from a Diamond HF-30HX Mobile Whip

Whilst on holiday in Trawsgoed, near Aberystwyth, Wales I setup my WSPRLite using a Diamond HF-30FX 10 MHz mobile whip.  The WSPRLite was configured using the WSPRLite Explorer App using Samsung Galaxy S7, setting the callsign and locations from the phone's GPS, and was left powered from the phone and left running overnight in the car.

Whilst the phone's battery was completely discharged in the morning, the transmitter worked from 8PM until approximately 4AM, and despite the "compromise antenna", contacts into most of Europe were logged.

Arduino Class Libraries for WSPR and SiLabs Si5351 Clock Generator IC

My first attempt at writing an Arduino sketch that transmitted a WSPR message using an AD9850 DDS Signal Generator module, whilst successful required the WSPR message to be generated using the WSPRcode.EXE and then manually edited into the Arduino Sketch before compiling the code.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to read the position and time from the NMEA string from a GPS, encode the message and then transmit it automatically - OK there are niceties such as a User Interface and LCD to contend with! 

Looking back at the Etherkits website, they appear to have a module available which has an SiLabs Si5351 Clock Generator mounted into a breakout, as do Adafruit, however they also supply an easily integrated Class Library.  Until a recent C# online course at work, I didn't really understand what C++ classes did and how to use them, so it's  time to experiment as I've got the example code to compile without error.

I've also got some building to do as I've got some QRP Labs low-pass filter modules to build for 5 and 10 MHz together with a Kanga / M0XPD Si5351 Shield for the Arduino.