Summary of 2016 SARA Western Conference ~ ERAU: Prescott, Arizona

The 2-day conference was packed with many other presentations, including a presentation by two high school students, Xander Pickard and Collin Miller, from Colorado who presented their measurements of both red-shifted and blue-shifted neutral hydrogen emissions from two celestial sources, Cassiopeia A and Rosette Nebula, using the 20 m dish at the NRAO facility in Greenbank, West Virginia. Ray Fobes gave us a rundown on the relatively inexpensive miniVNA Pro and miniVNA Tiny vector network analyzers and also updated us on the many activities and new instruments at the radio observatory since our last conference at ERAU in 2011.

One of the presentations by Skip Crilly will be of interest to attendees of future SARA Eastern Conferences at Greenbank. Skip is responsible for upkeep on the 40 ft radio telescope at Greenbank and he recently made major changes to the link from the dual polarization low noise amplifiers at the feed to the detectors. He installed RF-over-fiber signal cables and associated interfaces and removed the unused right-hand relay rack in the underground observation hut. Observers can now use their own receivers if they wish or continue using the on-site detectors (the conference proceedings provides a detailed description of Skip’s changes).

Bogdan Vacaliuc setup a poster and equipment display and also made a presentation on the RASDR3, which evolved from the RASDR2. The RASDR3 layout has been revised to allow easier expansion and accommodation of Raspberry Pi Hats. This will allow users to customize their RASDR3 receivers using readily available or customized components and printed circuit boards. To take advantage of volume component pricing, the RASDR3 project requires about 100 pre-orders. Jay Wilson’s presentation, Practical Systems for Remote Control of Amateur Radio Telescope Installations, provided information on his experience at Little Thompson Observatory using TeamViewer, Ham Radio Deluxe, Remote Rig and other remote control interfaces. Remote control of radio telescopes is often necessary because they must be located in areas with low RFI, usually far off the beaten path. Our inimitable SARA President Ken Redcap compared SDR-Sharp and ra_simple software in total power radio telescopes and the challenges associated with installing ra_simple on a Linux PC (conclusion: ra_simple is not simple to install).

We had a total of 14 presentations, all at the Student Union building (“The Hangar”). The above reviews only a few of the presentations but all were relevant and informative. See the photo gallery and conference schedule immediately following this narrative and also refer to the conference proceedings (each attendee received the proceedings in printed copy and CD, and these are available from the SARA store).

One of the many activities associated with SARA Western conferences is the drawing for items related to amateur radio astronomy, such as the SuperSID and SARA document CDs. Each registered attendee wrote a card with their name on it, which was pulled from Ken Redcap’s red cap until everything was given away.

Another tradition of the SARA Western conferences is the social gatherings at local restaurants in the evenings. On Friday evening many attendees met at the Prescott Station Grill & Bar (not the Prescott Station Bar & Grill) in downtown Prescott for a variety of southwestern style food. On Saturday evening we all met at Augie’s Restaurant in the Frontier Village Center on Highway 69. Our daytime breakfast and lunch meals were provided as part of the conference through the ERAU on-campus Dining Hall.

If you did not attend the 2016 SARA Western Conference, you missed wonderful technical sessions and a chance to learn from and talk to your friends and colleagues and scientists. We are grateful to ERAU and especially Ray Fobes for his help and hospitality.