Tag Archives: earth station

Carnarvon Museum Calls for Help

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The Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum Needs our Help.

In a recent post about the Opening of Carnarvon’s new Museum dedicated to NASA and OTC work, Graeme Hanigan said:

“It was interesting to see how quickly the history is rewritten.
The event was overrun by ex NASA ‘Trackers’ as they called themselves and there was lots of ill-informed conversation and confusion about the OTC site. At best I could describe ‘the museum’ is a jumbled collection of ‘space junk’. However the committee is well meaning and I hope that somewhere along the line they get the story straight. Continue reading →

The Carnarvon Space And Technology Museum

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Buzz in Carnarvon for the Opening

A nice bit of video from Buzz Aldrin’s arrival in Carnarvon for the opening of the new Space and Technology Museum. The site is the old OTC and NASA property at Carnarvon in Western Australia.

Colin Benporath is there and when he returns I hope to post a more detailed story and some of his pictures. Until then here are two videos showing Buzz Aldrin’s arrival and a video showing some background on the moon support Continue reading →

Ceduna 1 Synchro Resolver Drama

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Tony Fisher Lived to Fight Another Day

After reading about the twin dishes proposed for Jamesburg in an earlier article about Jamesburg Earth Station in the US, Tony Fisher wrote back with this story:

I wonder if the 100ft Ceduna 1 dish was also specified for this capability? It had a tracking speed of an incredible 0.3 degrees per second in both Azimuth and Elevation, although I only ever once saw it run in “full flight”, and then quite by accident. Continue reading →

Two Dishes at Jamesburg?

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FAX Coversheet Tells of an Unknown Future – by Robert Brand

Look carefully at the facsimile cover sheet below and you will see two dishes at Jamesburg. One is in front of the other slightly obscuring it, but two dishes are certainly shown. There was only one that was ever constructed. Why? An artist’s whim? No!

It goes back to the time that the station was being planned. Pure and simple, they did not know whether a geostationary satellite was going to work and this was the alternative. A series (constellation) of low earth orbit satellites in polar orbit. Continue reading →

Buzz Aldrin Headed to Carnarvon

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Buzz AldrinScuba Diving is a Buzz at Carnarvon – by Robert Brand

During a Space conference in the US last week, I had the opportunity to talk about the importance of Carnarvon to the Apollo 11 mission and other Apollo missions with Apollo 11 moon-walker Buzz Aldrin.

Buzz was very flattering about the importance of the NASA site at Carnarvon and the world class communications required to keep them in contact with other NASA sites. He said that the team took note of the Carnarvon area as they passed over it, wondering about the remoteness of the region and security of the links. Continue reading →

Visiting Jamesburg Earth Station (USA)

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AT&T’s Jamesburg Dish – by Robert brand

In early June 2012 I visited the Jamesburg site with the intention of surveying the site and turning it into a data centre. The site was abandoned by AT&T in 2002 following the attacks on the NY World Trade Center buildings. It was thought by AT&T that Jamesburg was too vulnerable to aircraft attack of a similar nature. I recently set up a company that is now looking to buy the site. The 2 day visit was like a trip back in time as many of the site’s offices and systems were still fully intact.

Continue reading →

Carnarvon Celebrations

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June 22 & 23, Buzz Aldrin will be in Carnarvon

The opening of the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum

This is a big story for the exOTC staffers. The preservation of these sites is a huge leap forward over the dishes that were left rust and corrode at Carnarvon. I so wish I could make it for the celebrations but I expect that there will be a few exOTC staff in the area and traveling for the big event.

Continue reading →

Jamesburg Earth Station For Sale

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Robert Brand and Jamesburg Earth Station.

It was about when I was 17 years old that I (Robert Brand) first heard of Jamesburg Earth Station. I was a second year trainee at the Dept of Civil Aviation Regional Training School at Waverton and assigned to the International Maintenance Centre (IMC) at Paddington for field training. I was asked to wiring up some Apollo 11 jumpering for Wayne Ozarko and I learned of this site as the received dish for the transmissions from Moree for the Apollo 11 moon landing.

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OTC and Apollo 11

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Apollo 11 40th anniversary Celebrations

This article was published by me (Robert Brand) as part of the Apollo 11 celebrations. The OTVA and OTC stories were told to the world through many media including radio.
This was published 40 year after Apollo 11 took off and it was 57 hours into the relived flight:

Apollo 11 right now (minus 40 years) and 57+ hours into the mission
Skip back 40 years to the minute with Apollo 11

Continue reading →