That rod pentode thing is simply amazing! What great info! Thanks so much. But that brings up another, related question: Anyone know what kind of transmitter was used in the Voyager spacecraft? And still working, 40+ years later.
Thanks! Ed K9EK
On October 5, 2018 at 8:21 PM GEO Badger via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
If anyone is a tube fanatic as I am there is a good write up of the Russian battery tubes used in Sputnik. They were developed for high acceleration and vibration conditions as well as operating very well at HF freqs. https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/summary_russian_rod_pentodes.html
https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/russian_subminiature_tubes.html?thread_id=... --- Ciao baby, catch you on the flip side. GEO
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
From: Julian Horn <[email protected]>To: Burns Fisher [email protected] Cc: AMSAT BB [email protected] Sent: Friday, October 5, 2018 7:49 AM Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] 1957
So, a quick and dirty translation of the PDF using Google Translate - sorry I dont have time to do the job properly at the minute! 73, Julian M0NUX
The transmitter of the first satellite, Boris STEPANOV (RU3AX), Moscow The launch by the Soviet Union of the first in the history of mankind, the artificial satellite of the Earth on October 4, 1957, was undoubtedly a world sensation. Newspapers and magazines, radio and television in all countries of the world reported this event as the main news of those days. After all, the apparatus created by man for the first time went beyond the Earth, opening a new era — outer space. Actually, no one did secrets from the fact that soon it will happen. From July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, the International Geophysical Year was to be held. The United States of America and the Soviet Union announced in advance that it would launch launches of artificial earth satellites. But at that time, for most people on our planet, it all sounded a bit abstract, and the media did not pay much attention to the upcoming launches. Meanwhile, intensive training was under way in both countries. Many technical and organizational issues were tackled, among which not in the last place is reliable and, most importantly, even the non-expert understandable registration of the satellite's orbit. This was a significant factor in the competition between the two powers. Signal reception The satellite “from space” onboard the satellite transmitter — what else could be more convincing for the general public around the world. At the end of 1956, we made a decision to involve radio amateurs in observing the signals of the first satellite to register its entry into orbit and further flight. A subtle hint of this sounded already in the January 1957 issue of Radio magazine: "It would be good to mobilize radio amateurs to receive radio signals that will be sent by satellites ...". And starting from the June issue, we went to publications on possible orbits of satellites, on observing their signals (with a lot of necessary technical details), a description of practical designs for conducting and the technology of these observations. The July issue also published the official appeal of the USSR Academy of Sciences to radio amateurs. And then there was a pause - the expectation of the actual launch of the first satellite. Naturally, professionals also monitored its launch into orbit, but radio amateurs were among those who were the first to report to Moscow about receiving satellite signals and, therefore, about its successful entry into near-earth orbit. It goes without saying that radio amateurs were not only interested in technical characteristics of transmitters installed on the first satellite, but also some details about what they are. However, then this information, like many other things related to space, was secret. Interest in the onboard equipment design of the first AES arose again when the 50th anniversary of its launch was approaching. Descriptions of amateur radio designs of transmitters on Soviet rod lamps even appeared on the Internet, but now it can be said with certainty that they had practically nothing in common with the transmitter of the first satellite: ... The radio equipment of the first AES was developed at the enterprise, which today is called Russian Space Systems (formerly NII-885), one of the founders of the Russian rocket and space industry, created in 1946. The article “The Main Designer” by G. Chliyants and the author of this publication, published in the February 2011 issue of the magazine “Radio”, described the main designer of this research institute, Mikhail Sergeevich Ryazansky, under whose guidance many radio engineering systems for Mi-cal industry. Last year, the Russian Space Systems OJSC released a reprint of a report on the development of an onboard radio station of the first Soviet artificial satellite of the Earth, which is shown on the cover of this issue of the magazine. It contains materials on the design and ground testing of satellite radio equipment. The original report was compiled in 1958. A noticeable part of it is devoted to the question of choosing the optimal frequencies for the onboard transmitters of the satellite and their power based on the data on the Earth's ionosphere at that time. It is interesting to note that in the form of a popular science article these materials were published in the magazine "Radio" back in the July 1957 issue! Without going into details, we note that from the results of this analysis it followed - with the most adverse assumptions, the frequency of the transmitter on board should not be lower than 15 MHz. At that time, the long-range direction finding in the HF in the country worked at frequencies up to 20 MHz, so this was chosen for the main transmitter. A higher frequency would be better, but then the available means of direction finding up to 60 MHz did not provide the necessary accuracy, so a frequency of 40 MHz was chosen for the second transmitter. Calculations showed that the transmitter signals with an output power of 1 W can be confidently received on Earth by receivers with a sensitivity of 5 µV. The scheme of the main transmitter ka at a frequency of 20 MHz is shown in Fig. 1. It was assembled on three 2P19B rod radio tubes. The second transmitter at a frequency of 40 MHz differs only in the nominal frequency-determining elements and the matching circuit of the output stage with the antenna. The frequency of the master oscillator performed on the VL1 lamp according to the so-called “Pierce circuit” (the “anode” function is performed by the screen grid ), stabilized by a quartz resonator ZQ1. In both transmitters, the operating frequency of the quartz oscillator was several kilohertz above 20 MHz. The circuit in the anode circuit of the VL1 is tuned to 20 MHz (in the second transmitter, to 40 MHz). Capacitor C8 symmetrizes this circuit (compensates for the output capacitance of the lamp of the master oscillator), because the output stage of the transmitter is push-pull. It is assembled on lamps VL2 and VL3 and in general has no features. Note that the filament circuits of all three lamps are connected in series. Such a solution, if any lamp failed, would eliminate the energy consumption of this transmitter and extend the service life of the other. Resistors R4 and R5 are used to equalize the voltage of the filament on the lamps. There is no pinned data of induction coils and chokes in the report (this is a report, not a design documentation!). There is also no data on a trimmer and a dual variable capacitor, which is set up in the output stage. Constant capacitors, the ratings of which are not shown in Fig. 1, - tubular KPKS-1 through passage. The power supply of the onboard radio equipment of the first satellite was completely autonomous - from silver-zinc batteries. The filament battery consisted of five elements SCD-70 with a capacity of 140 Ah and provided a voltage of 7.5 V. The anode battery consisted of 86 cells SPD-18 with a capacity of 30 Ah and provided a voltage of 130 V to supply anode batteries. transmitter chains. It had taps for powering the screen (90 V) and pentode grids of the output stages (10 V), as well as the manipulator (20 V). The mass of these batteries was about 50 kg, i.e. it was a significant part of the mass of the entire satellite. The batteries were supposed to provide uninterrupted transmitters for 14 days. Power supplies are not connected to the transmitter housings, which excludes failure due to accidental short circuits. Since the battery voltage is higher than the voltage required to supply three lamps, there was a limiting resistor in its minus circuit (outside the transmitter body). Transmitters were manipulated by a device on polarized relays by alternately supplying 90 V to screen grids of output cascades. The four antenna beams, which are all visible in the photographs of the first satellite, are the two beams of the main transmitter and two second ones. Figure 2 shows a photograph of a container with transmitters and a manipulator (it occupies about a fourth of the container!), And in fig. 3 - the node of one of the transmitters, extracted from the container. The title page of the report, on which the names of the main performers of the project are given: M.I. Borisenko, K.I. Greengauz, V.I. Lappo, A.I. Zinkovsky and the approving signature of M. S. Ryazansky himself gave us one more surprise. In the 90s, he collaborated with us, constantly visited the editorial office and published several materials Abram Isakovich Zinkovsky. We knew him as a competent radio engineer and accurate author. We knew that before the war I was addicted to short waves and had the call sign U3DH, that before retirement I worked in a serious research institute and was somehow connected with space topics. And what was our surprise when we saw his name on the front page of the report . It turns out that he was not just “somehow connected”, but was one of the main performers in creating onboard radio equipment of the first satellite — he was responsible for debugging it, design tests and delivery to the customer. The lead developer of the radio station and the ground-based device the first satellite was the head of the laboratory, Vyacheslav Ivanovich Lappo. Theoretical and practical studies of the propagation of radio waves in the range in which the transmitter worked were conducted by the head of another laboratory, Konstantin I. Gringauz. And the project was headed by Mikhail Ivanovich Borisenko. 2 Fig. 3 RADIO No 4, 2013 "RADIO" - ABOUT THE COMMUNICATION
On 5 Oct 2018, at 14:39, Burns Fisher [email protected] wrote:
I don't speak or read Russian, but if this is about Sputnik-1, it is clear that the Tx has 3 tubes, answering one question!
On Fri, Oct 5, 2018 at 9:00 AM, Hans BX2ABT [email protected] wrote:
A quick search yielded this....
ftp://ftp.radio.ru/pub/2013/04/55.pdf
Any Russian speakers here?
On 10/5/18 8:45 PM, Burns Fisher wrote:
Lots of interesting stuff in the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1#Design but it does not say what the active device was. A 1 watt transmitter in 1957? Must have been tubes, no?
An interesting thing I did not know: It was filled with nitrogen and used a fan to cool off the electronics!
On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 10:34 PM, JR3MHP [email protected] wrote:
Awesome!! Thank you, Bruce!!
What kind of devices did they use for transmitting this signal? I wonder transistors were good enough for this frequency, but.... vacuum tubes??
Best 73, Hiro (JR3MHP) _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb