Microwave Antennas & 21 cm Radio Telescope (1420 MHz) 

This is incredibly useful. I know about aluminum and its powerful urge to oxidize, and when desperate I’ve used nitrogen or argon to flood the material like when welding, but my half-baked brain never considered just brushing on some mineral oil. Thanks for the tip!

I will have to look it up. Thanks

Manuel - very good to hear from you. Now you have given me more ideas. Sounds like a fun project to measure the distance to the moon. Are there any good websites to look at for this project ?

@@ElPasoTubeAmps I haven't found anything similar but I have thrown some ideas on paper on how to do it. If you wish I would love to share

I got really hot on the project for a while but have not worked on it lately. Now that the weather is warm, I think I will take another shot at it by going to my favorite spot called, Aguirre Springs in New Mexico. If I do any more work and have updates, I will post them. I am very pleased you have your feed horn working so well. It looks like the most common antenna is the horn but since I had the dish, I went that way. Thanks for your reply.

Maybe we can meet and work together now. My wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late February and passed away June 19. I have wonderful friends in El Paso that have inspired me to keep going. I think I crossed a line in the sand about three days ago. I am OK but I am not an early riser. I am likely to be up to 6 AM and want a nap at 2 PM... after getting up... lol Aliens? why not... I think they are here but not extraterrestrial they are all terrestrial just like we are and came from the Earth that was seeded with universal dust for the last zillion years. Who isn't an alien? I am truly honored that some of my videos had value for you. I am not going to put my cell number on YT but my direct email is TheAudioShop@SBCGlobal.net I don't think I ever did the wifi scanning from Transmountain. 6 GHz, VNA that means doing some 5 GHz work. I just made sure I could do 2.4 GHz and my HP signal generator seem to not like anything above 3 GHz lately. I ordered a 4 GHz signal from Ebay recently. I rarely need true calibration as relative levels are good enough. A 20KW power meter - sounds like fun. I am 73 and retired. Yourself?

@@ElPasoTubeAmps I send my deepest condolences Sir, I can't imagine how difficult that is for you and your family. Glad to hear you are pulling through the difficulty life has presented you with the support of friends and continue with your interests. If you ever need someone to talk to or yell at, I'll happily assist. RU-vid didn't notify me of your reply otherwise it would have been a much more timely response. Your videos inspired me to improve my RF knowledge to at least the basics with the intent to have this very conversation, I was always told it's black magic voodoo child work but I was too curious and wanted to experiment with you one day. Seen the recent videos and figured it was time to speak up and I'm glad I finally broke the ice. Totally understand as I try to stay anonymous as possible online, I already typed up this reply before getting to your email so figured I would continue here. I have a healthy interest in the whole UFO topic, inconclusive on their origin and desperately curious to know more about them in the realm of data people like us are accustomed to. About 10 years ago I seen a UFO which forever changed my opinion of the topic, I thought it was something only crazy people seen. Maybe that's when I became a crazy person? Not sure yet on that one either... Unfortunately I only have a liteVNA, same league as the handheld analyzers you have but as you stated relative is good enough. I've only been doing 2.4GHz work, validating PCB microstrip characteristic impedance and antenna's for a microcontroller based mesh network. I couldn't justify a proper VNA for my application when these cheap units do the job. I'm 40, self employed and working myself to the bone to hopefully keep it that way. The current parts shortages completely wrecked my entire world, everything needed reworked multiple times and barely kept my head above water. In the end it was a net positive but a very uncomfortable experience. Hopefully soon I'll have much more spare time on my hands to learn more about this radio frequency stuff. I look forward to more correspondence and hopefully some experiments with you.

​@@str8upkickyaindanuts289 The detail I have not worked out is how to use the amplitude, frequency, bandwidth, whatever from the hydrogen line and out of the speaker of the SDR to mix in some way with music and make something pleasant to listen to. I apologize but I have posted so many lately, I am not sure which one I am talking about some time... As for UFO's, we will be going soon back camping at Aguirre Springs (hopefully) with the both telescopes and the radio telescope and a person to do the CE5 protocol to summons the aliens. Your thoughts in how to contact ETs ?

@@ElPasoTubeAmps I think that's a great idea, I would need to do some digging into the methods of exporting the SDR data. It sounds very doable in my opinion. No need to apologize, I understand the difficulty managing thoughts while multitasking. Aguirre Springs is just on the other side of the mountain from me and the exact location I seen a UFO, I would love to accompany you guys if time allows. I'm not sure I want to contact an alien to be honest and haven't really given it any thought. I'm not the smartest person in the world and with that in mind I don't foresee an intelligent entity wanting much to do with me, detecting them on the other hand... Now that's right up my alley. 1.6GHz is the frequency of interest based loosely on a TV show "secret of skinwalker ranch" in which a prominent researcher has demonstrated a direct correlation with high strangeness events including UFO's and the detection of the 1.6GHz signal. Using the dish you helped me locate years ago, I figure I could make a directional detector in attempt to do some experiments of my own. If you are going to be doing the CM5 protocol I think having the ability to detect beyond our limited sensory bandwidth, including the ability to detect this supposed electronic signature would be a worthwhile addition to the fun. If that's of any interest to you I'll gladly contribute my resources to the effort.

I haven't heard from TomTekTests in a long time either. At our age things can change quickly. I don't remember Tom's age but he and I did communicate regularly at one time. My wife was diagnosed in late February that she had pancreatic cancer and passed away on June 19. It is quite a reboot process to carry on after that loss but my passion for hobbies and some of the most wonderful people I have met lately in El Paso have helped me stay sane and get back to a functioning life. This radio telescope is the inspiration from a most beautiful woman that I have an Agape love for that is keeping me going. As with us tech type guys - first built as simple prototype as possible and see what you can get. I had a lot of trouble finding a relative signal strength level for the hydrogen line and finally saw the signal was in the noise and had to be "stacked" to pick out of the noise. Some guys seen to record the whole thing with peak-hold set and get a graph after 7 hours. I got to work faster than that at my age... 256 FFT does a good job and allows other signals to rise and fall as required. I am not sure why the frequencies we pick up are not at the resonate frequency of H. It is doppler shift? I still have a lot to learn but my goal is to mix this signal or any astronomy signal and make music out of it. That is where I am trying to go with this at this time. Although I know nothing of this discipline yet it looks like you have some nice equipment. I was one-of-a-kind, world-class computer geek in 1970-1994 with NASA but not anymore. I am hardware and love measurement and analog and even demonstration and documentation for posterity. I think my antenna is quite adequate but I have no positing system for it. I do have a small polar-axis tracker but it can not handle the weight of the dish. Please stay in touch. We can learn a lot together. TheAudioShop@SBCGlobal.net

@@ElPasoTubeAmps I’m so sorry to hear of your wife’s passing. My step-father succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2012, it’s frequently vicious, and leaves little time to prepare (in that one could really ever brace for such loss). I’m a young buck who will turn 40 next year, although I was diagnosed with MS at 18, so I do my best to not take any good day for granted. I hope all is well with Tom, I know he had a fairly major surgery last year, but he typically took on an active schedule with teaching and videos. Before he went quiet he was planning a pretty in-depth new series on digital communications. He’s an interesting fella, and although I don’t know him personally, I value very much the knowledge he has shared with me the last several years. I will eagerly keep up with your work, and if I see something that I can offer some info in return that may help, I won’t hesitate. You have taught me an immense amount about vintage tube gear, transformers and inductors, and really helped make sense of impedance in a practical way where my formal classes left me with only a tenuous grasp. Tom said on several occasions that he felt it was an obligation to share his knowledge, and whether or not that’s actually the case, I really can’t thank folks like you guys enough for taking the time to do what you do, and for sharing it freely with folks like me. Be well! ~Stephen D. in Concord, NC

@@silverXnoise Stephen, Per your last comment, yes, we are trying to give away all that we have learned. All that we have shall someday be given. It seems to attract smart people and in turn we get to work with those people. My son is exactly your age and was diagnosed with MS in 2016. He started going to the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and is doing wonderfully well. I hope you are too. Well, I do want us to work together but you should know I run hot and cold on projects - it's all or nothing but I can start-stop a lot. Now that I have proven I can do it but need to mix the sounds I can pick up from the Aether, then that might be far enough on this project - unless I contact ET... what would I say to ET?

I don't recall there being any difference is the way I use the SDRPlay at the 1.4 GHz range than I do at 14 MHz. I do have it configured for AM and not SSB but I can not think of any thing else that is different. Possibly you might notice some settings on the screen in the video. 73 WA4QGA

It is all focused to a point inside the can so that the ray from the outer edge draws a straight line with the input edge of the feed horn. That is the point you get the best focus. Any more or less and you would see less of the dish.

Right after these videos were posted and my completion of the radio telescope, this project got shelved and I went back to amateur radio. Since I worked at White Sands Missile Range for 20 years, I am confident the aliens know me and will come in swarms when I go to Aguirre Springs in the next few weeks. I will report back then. 🙂

@@ElPasoTubeAmps ok please do!! I am very interested in Alien communication for personal reasons. This banning of the 1420mhz frequency is very odd in my view.

@@madmantrader There's nothing odd about the neutral hydrogen frequency of 1420 MHz being set aside for radio astronomy. In the U.S. the FCC has chopped up the radio spectrum into bands for lots of distinct uses. There are frequencies set aside for, for example, TV transmitters or cell phones. Everyone else is banned from using those frequencies. There are lots of other bits of frequency set aside for radio astronomy, around the spectral lines of other elements and compounds: the hydroxyl radical (OH), CH, formaldehyde, methanol, water vapor, and so on. I've been watching lots of videos of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. In one someone lamented that satellites were not regulated as broadcasters inside the nation were, and an OH line was basically dead for observation now.