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[freax]

The task is definitely a challenge, but don't over-estimate its complexity. Just speculating that a home-brew receiver front end was probably done with vacuum tubes intended for point-to-point microwave radios - I believe several types designed and manufactured by Western Electric (remember that company?) were available through surplus channels in that time frame. Was "416B" one of the designations?

Awesome, even more vacuum was involved with the moon landing!

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/53538-416b-dangerous-tube.html#post597929

It chimes with what this guy mentions.

Who says tubes can't listen in at class?

I graduated from High School in 1969, loved my first girlfriend that summer, and watched the moon landing on television with her. (Her parents bought a new, top-of-the-line color television, mainly for that event - or so they said. I don't recall the prices but I remember estimating that it probably cost him more than a month's take-home pay. ) Afterwards, as we were making out on her folks' back porch, we stumbled on the technical fact that would make it possible for any mere mortal with some electronics skills and a bit of money to intercept those transmissions: You can SEE the moon, and that means unobstructed line-of-sight communications.

(Well, we weren't thinking in EXACTLY those terms, but you get the idea.)

Dale

See that's pretty much my dream life.

All I did while I was a teenager was rock back and forth in the corner and refuse food while my *cut* well you get the picture...it gets darker from there.

Ahh memories.

 

[Tubelab_com]

I'm sure he was using the right equipment and antenna because from the moon that is one hell of a distance

I watched his presentation, but it was about 10 years ago, maybe more. I remember that he had a huge dish antenna. I don't remember the receiver details.

The task is definitely a challenge, but don't over-estimate its complexity.

Definitely a lot harder in 1969 than today, but today ham radio operators routinely BOUNCE radio signals off the moon's surface and re receive them on the earth a couple of seconds later. With Apollo the transmitter was ON the moon eliminating half of the path loss and the very lossy reflector, the moon itself.

I have heard my own echos from the moon on 902 MHz with a 12 foot dish, 500 watts and a 0.5 db NF LNA. My neighbor had 50 or so moonbounce contacts on 1296 MHz with 1200 watts of tube power a 12 foot dish and a 0.75 db NF LNA.

I would love to hear it for myself

I thought I remember reading somewhere that some of the audio and video feeds were released as part of the 40th anniversary celebration ceremony a few years back.

Heh, well a home computer from 1975 would've been as powerful as the lunar lander

I built a home computer in 1975. It was pretty pathetic by todays standards. 8 bit, 2 K bytes of memory, a Motorola MC6800 processor running at a blazingly fast 875 KILOHERTZ! I think NASA had a bit more speed and memory back then, but......

In 1978 I got pissed off with the politics at Motorola and left to work at Modular Computer Corporation building the next generation mainframes for......NASA! The state of the art machine for the time ran four AMD AM2901 4 bit slice ALU's in parallel to create a 16 bit machine. It ran at 16 MHz in standard configuration, but "overclocked" (that word wasn't invented yet) versions existed that ran at 20 MHz. A 32 bit version also existed.

MODCOMP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My old boss from Motorola made me an offer I couldn't refuse to return, so after 4 month of computers, I went back to Mot. Modcomp still exists, but doesn't build hardware any more.

Home

Her parents bought a new, top-of-the-line color television, mainly for that event

Our family had a crusty old Magnavox B&W TV. I however had dragged home an old 1957 vintage Emerson (built by RCA) 21 inch round color TV. It was dead (CRT and other problems) but I was on a mission to fix it just to prove my father wrong. I had a job in a TV repair shop, and I had made a deal for a used CRT with some life left on it. It took me about a year, but by the first moon walk that was successfully televised in color, I had it working. There was 20 or 30 people all stuffed into my bedroom to watch it. This embarrassed my father so much that he went out and bought a color TV.

Remember that the first color TV camera that went to the moon was fried when the operator pointed it at the sun!