Bob Dildine, SK, tuning the historic RCA H Set transmitter that he and his colleagues from Hewlett Packard lovingly restored. This historic transmitter is back in service and can be heard on many Saturdays, and during special events. Thanks Bob for your dedication to this massive project!

The following summer Bob accepted an engineering position at Bechtel Corporation in Maryland.  A year later he and his wife had a daughter and Bob decided to return to California to attend graduate school at UC Berkeley.  He completed his M.S. in Electrical Engineering eight months later!  

While finishing his M.S. at Berkeley Bob was offered a job at Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa ~ a company he had admired since he was very young.  From there he settled into a rewarding 30 year career at HP that included two 3 year stints in their Japan offices.  

As an adventurous guy he enjoyed his time in Japan very much and was an active member of TIARA (Tokyo International Amateur Radio Association) making many friends there.  His only lament about Tokyo ~ with space in such short supply he had to get creative and set up his Ham Shack in the pantry of the kitchen.  :)

Since he was a small boy Bob was an avid Ham Radio enthusiast.  His grandfather Francis Harvey introduced him to Amateur Radio from his Ham Shack above the garage in his San Diego home.  Later, teenage Bob and his friends built their own Ham Shack in the backyard of Bob's parent's Sacramento home.  He would continue to enjoy and explore Amateur Radio over the rest of his years ~ entering DX contests, building antennaes, writing articles for QST, and making many good friends among like minded radio lovers in Northern California and around the world.  

Over the years Bob shared his love for radio with anyone who was interested in learning no matter what their level.  While a young man at HP he hosted an after school Ham Radio club at Montgomery High school and at age 70 he spent afternoons teaching a seven year old boy radios and how to build them in his radio room.  He truly enjoyed teaching "non hams" the magic of radio.  

Bob was diagnosed with ALS January 3, 2018.  Over the next thirteen months he faced the disease with an amazing amount of courage and grace that is an inspiration to us."

Thank you so much, Maiko. Your dad was a true gentleman and a great supporter of the MRHS. He is missed. We send along to you, your mom, and your family, our deepest condolences.

The original American Marconi/RCA Receive Site at Marshall, CA

KPH SDR mavens, Rob Robinett and Lynn Rhymes sniffing out stray RF noise at the KPH Receive Site/RS!

All of the the equipment in the LBR runs off 12VDC supplied by a 30 AH AGM battery now charged by a 110VAC to 30A  Powerwerx SWPSU (ed. switching power supply).  The system ran off that battery for all of the 8 hour Thursday morning AC power outage, which gave me  a chance to see the LF/MF RFI on Kiwi72 with all other devices in the building powered off.  Because the HF Kiwis are fed by the AC-powered KPH distribution amp and during the outage the HF Kiwis showed almost no signals or noise 0-30 Mhz, it appears much of the HF RFI is produced outside  of the LBR.   Yesterday I again verified that the 30A SWPSU is not a source of RFI by comparing the full spectrum with that SWPSU  turned off and the distribution amp powered up.

However during that outage I continued to see some 54k KHz SWPSU RFI on the HF Kiwis and much more on the LF/MF Kiwi fed by the Marconi-T.  All of the Kiwis are fed by 1 Mhz SWPSU, so the likely source was the 12V to 24V SWPSU feeding the Internet connection dish on the KPH roof.

In addition, the Wifi Access Point was located inside the LBR which not only placed it near the Kiwis, but also made Wifi coverage very limited inside the building.  

So with the welcome assistance of Tom Yarish, on Saturday we:

1) Repurposed two unused CAT-5 cables to the roof so they now carry the LBR 13.8 VDC to that dish with very little voltage loss.  I and many other Ubiquity dish users run them reliably at 12 VDC, so I am confident our Internet connection will remain stable at that supply voltage, but of course I will be monitoring it to be sure. So that final SWPSU was no longer required for our Internet connection.

2) Moved the Wifi AP out of the LBR to the top of the tall rack adjacent to the LBR.  

With those changes the LF/MF Kiwi spectrum is starting to look pretty clean from 10 Khz through 20 Mhz although you can see bursts of broadband -110 dBm noise most clearly in the 2-4 Mhz region.  I don't think those bursts were visible during the Thursday power outage, so I suspect they are the result of a local AC-powered signal.  I have no theories about >20 Mhz noise, but this Marconi-T antenna should not be very useful at those frequencies anyway.

Even with those two impairments, I think this is outstanding performance."

Thanks Rob for all you are doing to always improve the KPH SDR''s!  If you have not listened to what radio signals sound like at KPH, give the SDRs a listen!  For the High Frequency SDRs, click here. For the Low and Medium Frequency SDRs, click here!

*** Having completed most of the work to repair the damage caused to the Bolinas antenna field by winter storms, and awaiting the completion of that work, Maintenance Supervisor Bill Ruck/RK spent some time organizing the Rigger's Shop (see the picture above). He sends along this report:

The base of one of the poles that supports an antenna at Bolinas.

" My main objective for the day was to clean up the mess in the rigger's shop.  While we were working on restoring the feed lines stuff just got dumped there.

While I was digging my way through the pile, VI (Transmitter Department member Bob Venditti) asked for thoughts about guys on the H-frame by Gate 1.

We walked out there and clearly the H-frame is leaning south due to the strain from the feed lines with no guys on the north pole.  We also discovered a loose guy wire on the north side that appears to have never been connected.  Also, there is a ground anchor that had rusted broken off guy remains.

So the thought was to connect the loose guy to the anchor which would offset the strain on the H-frame.

Returned to the rigger's shop for a chain hoist, pork chop, sling, and a couple fist grips.  (Editor's note: If you don't know what these are: "pork chop" is a sliding grip that kind of looks like the meat; "fist grip" is a mechanical clamp for wire rope.)

We cut off the old rusted remains and then assembled the hoist on the guy wire and took up the slack.  Connected the guy to the anchor with the fist grips and released the strain.  We thought that the guy was kind of loose so we took up strain again with the chain hoist and added strain one click at a time until we heard the H-frame creak.

Connected the guy wire with fist grips and released the chain hoist.

Although this did not straighten out the vertical poles of the H-frame the guy is now relieving some of the strain from the feed lines.

In the process VI cut his finger and left blood on everything.  We cleaned up the red stuff and I handed him a Band-Aid.

VI then went "Out Standing In The Field" to clean off the base of one of the poles while I returned to the rigger's shop.

After cleaning up most of the loose parts, I started to inventory the Preform grips.  Sorted them out and found the following:

About 56 each two black mark grips.  Most were missing labels but a couple had a label that had p/n GDE-1106 for 5/16" steel.  These are what we mostly will use.

We have 5 boxes of 50 each and more loose of p/n BG-MS-2739 with one yellow mark.  Don't know what those are used for.  Look a little smaller than the 5/16" ones.

Also have a pile of ones with two red marks that are much smaller. Those might have been for the TCI antenna parts we found at MX.

And some GDE-2104 grips with two yellow marks.  A few bigger ones with two orange marks.

Will need to research what those other grips are for and if they would be useful for us.

VI found that the pole was rotten and suspect.  Details from him.  He also found some artifacts in the weeds that are interesting.  Insulators with very small wire (like #20) but using Nicopress offset dead-ends. Wonder what antenna used this?  Left one of those insulators on the table in the Engineer's Lounge for examination.

VR

RK"

Thanks RK and VI for the efforts and the report! The work never ends!

For more information about KWMR, and to listen to the live stream, click here.