[amsat-bb] OVRO Dish is 130'

["Tom Clark, W3IWI" <w3iwi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just to make a slight correction -- The Caltech Owens Valley Radio 
Observatory (OVRO) dish is 130 ft in diameter (40 Meters), and not 140' 
as has been reported here.

The OVRO dish was constructed in 1963-4 at the Cal Tech site in Lone 
Pine, CA (south of Bishop) -- easily visible from Rt.395. The antenna is 
described in detail on the Caltech web site at  
<http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/OVRO-CMB/40m.html>.

As a radio astronomer I have been a frequent OVRO user and I have many 
fond memories of the place. I especially remember the clear moonless 
mites and being able to skies as I have in few other places ;<}

FYI, while reminiscing about big dishes -- the only 140' (43M) dish that 
was ever on EME was the 140' at Greenbank, WV which we activated for the 
October 1987 EME contest as W3IWI/8 with a multi-band feed that covered 
432, 1296 2304 and 10.4 GHz.


Also in 1982 we put the 140' on the air on 432 as K8HUH and W3IWI/8. 
This was a part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 
detection of radio waves from our Milky Way Galaxy by Karl Jansky. His 
initial detection was around the present 15M band with the array you can 
see at <http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_jansky.shtml>. As a part of 
the celebration we fired up the re-constructed array on 15M for a few 
hundred QSO's. I remember the 140'/Jansky EME event because W3IWI was 
able to earn a 70 cm WAC in under 12 hours; Z21JJ made Africa trivial, 
and the hardest continent was South America where we had to rouse YV5ZZ 
from bed to get a QSO!

Both OVRO and Greenbank are dwarfed by two 150' dishes (Algonquin & 
Stanford) and the 1000' dish at Arecibo that have been used for EME. 
[Also once, I "kerchunked" myself off the moon on 2M with a handheld FM 
HT from the feed of the now defunct Greenbank 300'er, but I didn't make 
any QSOs.]

73 de Tom, W3IWI
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