[RadioTelescope] More info from physics

[Craig Williams]

Some more stuff about the telescope (including a cool use i hadn't thought
of )

----Original Message-----
From: Timo P. Vaalsta [mailto:timo at physics.uwa.edu.au]
Sent: Thursday, 18 March 2010 11:49 AM
To: Andre Fletcher
Cc: Craig Williams; Ian McArthur(Physics); Lister Staveley-Smith; Richard
Dodson; Jay Jay (Cyllene); Joe Coletti; aburrell at cyllene.uwa.edu.au;
lance at physics.uwa.edu.au; timo at physics.uwa.edu.au
Subject: Re: Radiotelescope on the roof of physics

Hi All,

The radio dish on the Bofors gun-mount was last tested by Ken
Frost and I a couple of years ago. The designed purpose was to
track oribiting weather satellites and recieve the high resolution
image data. On recollection Ken and I managed to recieve
the image data on a few occassions and then the dish was
mothballed due to lack of interest. This was the high reolution
images, not the medium resolution images that can be recieved
by an fixed dipole or qudrapole antennas on the physics
rooftop, which where at one time on live display in the
Physics atrium.

The status of the Bofors mounted dish was that it was largely
ready to go. There remained only the minor matter
of calibrating or rather tuning the gearing ratios to
tracking rates.

In brief:

* The stepper motors, Low Noise AMPS, reciever electronics,
 and control box were last stored in the Electronics Workshop
 area. Since then moved for more permanent storage.

* I wrote some preliminary code to control the Alt-Az mount
 control logic board that drives the stepper motors; connection
 via parrallel port of the computer. Though serial port
 will do, provided you have enough pinouts (more than one
 port needed.)

* The Dongal and some of the satellite image construction
 software were or are on the old Astronomy computer I
 setup in the dome and on a computer donated by Peter Smith.
 I think the Smith computer has disappeared.

* The Azimuth part of the mount is likely to be full of
 water. It needs to to syphoned out. Syphoning ceased
 when the dish was mothballed.

* Lister at one time sought to obtain another reciever to
 record Natural sky radio sources, say the 21cm line.
 Ken and I looked into it, but no gear was purchased
 from the recommendations.

In short - the dish was almost ready to go a few years
ago. There isn't much to do if one wants to track
weather satellites, just a bit of software writing
to get it to track near Earth satellites, which is
an exercise in celestial mechanics.

Regards,

Timo.
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