
Wow Signal – 30th Anniversary Report - wglb
http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm#hind
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wglb
This was from the “Big Ear” radiotelescope at Ohio State, run by John Kraus,
author of the textbook “Electromagnetics” and a ham radio operator W8JK. It
was one of the textbooks in my EE curriculum. Several years after i graduated,
I found myself in Ann Arbor and stumbled in to the University of Michigan
Amateur Radio Club. Some of the members were top-notch contesters. One of the
contests that was run when I was there was the 160 meter contest. W8UM had
always placed pretty well, but the Ohio State club kinda beat everyone. They
used the football-sized reflective base of the Big Ear with a balloon
(actually a kitoon) to hold up the vertical. Huge signal.

Turns out that in order to let the club use that structure, JK used them to do
a bunch of cleanup around this massive structure.

The year that I was part of the UM team, we got permission to use an old AM
radio tower in disuse and did pretty well ourselves. Much fun.

