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Updates and news for the website or RIG

21/09/2011
In the beginning
Henry Neale reports:

A long time ago, things were a considerably different from those we have today! - No PC's no laser/bubblejet printers, no software. We weren't back to flint axes but we did have severe limitations in what was available and possible. I, personally have had too many hobbies throughout my life. I started off with amateur television. This then led to ordinary ham radio and my involvement with contest working on the VHF/UHF bands. I also got married which as you all know does impede any rapid progress along life's difficult path. I built an 108 feet tower from raw materials. It was erected, - it did help having a cousin who drives a crane! This was up for several years and a fair bit of amateur radio work achieved, when it was involved indirectly with a car leaving the road outside my property and going through one of the guy ropes. It broke one of them - (1/2" galvanised steel rope) and slipped the second one about 9 feet along its surplus length! The broken one twanged around the next set of guys at 90 degrees to the first set, going over top of them! It didn't make the same elevation on the next set but went underneath this set - finishing nearly doing a 270 degree rotation - must have been quite a sight if it had been in daylight! After the damage the tower had to be lowered even though it was still safe, to repair the damage. I won’t bore you with any more of that part of the story except to say that it still hasn't been re-erected.

Before this all happened I had been investigating how low down I could receive signals from the horizon or even possibly below. To do this I had been monitoring an early Oscar (amateur radio satellite). This transmitted on alternative days either 144mhz or 432mhz. I was listening on the 144mhz frequency because the receivers were more sensitive on that frequency. The alternative day system gave me a good indication of how good my site was. It was soon realised that I hadn't got any mountain ranges in the way and could hear right down to the horizon and with the demise of the 100 foot tower, elevation didn’t give me any advantages – just increased feeder loss. When the satellite is line of sight you are getting all there is - so who needs elevation! The only problem was that the satellite only gave me readings from exactly the same locations – within a little - the orbit didn't precesses to give me any intermediate times.

The view to the North in Britain, and starting from the right side. The overhead descending pass comes in about 030° and passes overhead goes out via the west coast of Africa. A later intermediate descending pass comes in from a similar direction, goes to the North of the UK and passes out in the mid-Atlantic. Then follows a very low pass that comes in somewhere about 040° and goes out about 320°. As the day progresses an intermediate ascending pass comes in over say the Caspian Sea, then passes near Moscow out to the North of Finland disappearing out at about 330°. The last pass indicated is an overhead ascending pass that comes in about 155° from the Sahara, Italy, UK and out about 330°

I then discovered that the satellites were launched at the same time as a weather satellite or something else that was paying the launch costs. To avoid having to change the thrust from the launch rocket, it was easier to bring the payload up to a designated figure by adding ballast weights. It wasn't long before the amateur radio fraternity had words in the right places offering to supply some of the ballast in the form of equipment .

To get more accuracy in my study I started using the signals on the 137mhz band to extend my investigations. As you all know, it doesn't take long to be hooked and if I could get the right equipment I too could be watching instead of listening to these perpetual motion objects. It wasn't easy - listening was easy but decoding was different. The orbit dynamics were not too difficult for me to get my few brain cells around - I had obtained an "O" level GCE at maths and with the advent of VAT I had used a calculator. This all started to come together and I got the hang of the Doppler effect and how far it moved frequency. The decoding was the only bit I was failing at.

I consulted one of my knowledgeable peers and decided that there were some ex-military/navy gear that might help. The system used a moist paper and when a current was drawn through it - it changed colour! The mechanics were difficult to obtain, but were available occasionally. The drive electronics were a different story - I would have to make my own! A system of oscillators/driver/output circuits was cobbled together using the latest technology - ICs! The oscillator wasn't difficult but the remainder was untrodden ground. I used a JK flip/flop initially - the only problem was that I didn't know that when it started it took 2 clock pulses to get going. In that first few milliseconds the 2 outputs could be both on at the same time! I also found out that the output transistors were also known as the fastest fuses on 3 legs! The circuit used a complementary pair of npn/pnp switching transistors in each leg of the split winding motor - hence both transistors were drawing a considerable amount of current from the PSU at the same time - usually the pnp one gave up first and I was then repairing that channel yet again. I eventually sorted it out by applying the output voltages after the clock pulses had started up!

I now had a motor that, with the correct pulses and the correct timing, would go around at the correct speed - (96 lpm in those days) and I could then concentrate on the video amplifiers - a much more civilised part of the world - wrong! The rotation was the wrong way around. - the image would be a mirror image - no problem - just reverse the connection to one of the windings - if only it was that simple! The helix was being rotated the wrong way. It was mounted on small leaf spring type material and was OK when rotating the designed way. If anything got caught when going the wrong way - disaster - the whole lot finished in a tangled mesh nearly as quickly as the 3 legged fuses! With a very careful use of fine sandpaper I managed to get it to work for a short time. It was then that the system let me down again - through my own fault. The system of moist paper changing colour when a current is drawn through it was in fact an electrolytic action and the very fine smooth stainless steel wire was slowly being etched away!

I eventually gave up on this system and had to resort to the indignity of a small mirror glued to the side of the mechanics and view the image in that! The UK wasn't very big in the first place - about 0.75" from Lands End to John O'Groats but it was a picture! After several more months I found out that a remote acquaintance had a Muirhead 649 type machine that was laying idle! - Well it wasn't for long! A good chat-up line and I had borrowed it for one of those short periods that lasts longer than most would have tolerated! I found a source of the moist paper at a reasonable price and bought about 100 x 100 foot rolls - I was getting through about 15 feet a day in those early days - it must have been about 1977. I eventually used up most of the paper and anyway the acquaintance wanted his machine back - after 2+ years! I was left displayless and nothing but the sound pervading the shack for many a month!

After a while, I was elated to read in the German VHF/UHF magazine an article by UM3UMV Matz Vidar about a solid state framestore for weather satellite images. I knew the capabilities of a framestore because I had assisted in a demonstration (provided the monitor) of a slow scan framestore at Aston University, Birmingham a few years earlier. This was exactly what was needed. The components were perhaps not too difficult to source but the PCB was a different story. I had been in contact with Les Currington, Rev. James Brown and Dr Gerry Kennedy and had found out that there were several more than just us few doing this sort of activity. Phil Seaford was another contact and he had acquired some PCBs for this project. I soon had a set in my clammy hands and had it populated very quickly. I didn't dare to switch it on and pleaded with Les Currington to do the honour of getting it going for me! My construction techniques were more akin to a blacksmith than a surgeon! However, Les worked wonders and there it was clocking its images in and out with remarkable regularity. All the credit really does go to Les! This was getting serious stuff now. There were a lot of RIGleys about in those days but RIG didn't exist! There wasn't any other answer to it, but to form a group. Consultation with Les, Gerry and Phil were encouraging but only Henry seemed keen to put his neck on the line!

I could produce a few 19" pictures taken early in the morning - display them on a backdrop and have a table, with a book, where interested hams and other members of the public could leave their names and addresses. When a open meeting to form a group was called, we would notify them of details. I attended several Rallies during the following months and when the winter came and the rallies dried up it came to a make or break time and I had to come up with something. James had let me have an image of a very good clear day over the UK and this was a good starting point. I had an old photocopier but it was of the early type that didn't copy photos very well. It produced good copy of text but images were just about unrecognisable - it reproduced edges not blocks - so wasn't much use. However another acquaintance had a sophisticated copier in his works office and would copy for me just the front cover of what I called the "Invitation". My machine would copy the other 7 sides or so of A4, so the job could be done. Content - started with the cover picture + "Invitation" then inside the front page (A5) to an open meeting about whether we could form a small group of like minded enthusiasts. Reports from different sources as to the current status and also a list of those who had shown an interest in the "Interested" book followed. It took a while to get this all done and then if you have a heap of booklets, they don't do any good if they stay in a heap! They had to be stuffed into envelopes - the cheapest ones that I could lay my hands on! Addresses - I had been very fortunate in meeting Des Watson in these very early days and he typed the addresses into his system and produced them on a strip of paper that had to be sellotaped onto the envelopes. These together with about £30 of 2nd class stamps completed the job. Without Des (who became our first "Membership Secretary") and several others that I have forgotten to mention - forming RIG would have been too much - even for Henry!

Gerry had come to the Rally at Sandown Park to support us and on the way he had the idea to call the group - RIG - Remote Imaging Group! Well the initial meeting was far better supported than any of us could have expected - about 50 present and so RIG was born on the 23rd of March 1985! The first official Newsletter (with a circulation of about 286) was posted a few weeks later.

In the early days the then current hot equipment was a frame store, originally developed by Matz Vidar? UM3UMV. His article in the German magazine “VHF COMUNICATIONS” was an instant success. The PCBs for this frame store became available and many were built, and many cursed the fact that the holes were not plated through causing you to remove several components to restore the desired connections. If only they had had plated through holes a lot of the disappointment when it was powered up and didn’t work would have been avoided.

The next development was the PCSATIII from Timestep – expensive at the time but never the less another giant leap forward. RIG needed to get on board but hadn’t any suitable equipment to demonstrate it at rallies, to enhance its selling potential. I had a cannibalised IBM PC in bits but when assembled it did start to work after a fashion. Its FAT was corrupted but that was soon rectified by Norton Disk Doctor. It had a HDD of 20megs and was soon showing good signs. It only had a 512kb memory and that needed to be increased to 640 before PCSATIII would work. Again that was quickly remedied and it then worked with PCSATIII. This was shortly before the RSGB Rally at Woburn and a small petrol generator was requisitioned to provide us with power. On the day the system didn’t work as the degaussing circuit on the monitor pulled the generator down too far and we were at a standstill! However a neighbouring stand had a more powerful generator and we swapped over for the Rally as they were not using much power and took pity on us. I believe that we were receiving live APT pictures then and a great deal of interest was shown in PCSATIII’s results.

We were then attending about 3 rallies per year and our expertise and experience developed to quite an high level and many units of PCSATIII were sold giving RIG a very useful income. Subsequent to PCSATIII came a more sophisticated version called PROSATII. This had many refinements that upgraded us to a more professional setup. Whilst we were at another radio rally there was another stand with wx software and Dave Cawley told us to drop the price of PROSATII to £100 and this really did make wx receiving an increasingly interesting hobby. About this time the Geostationary satellites were becoming more popular with their 24 hour coverage. Dartcom were then producing a downconvertor that could be mounted near the aerial and fed the 137 mhz signal back to the rally stand via sometimes very long lengths of coax. 1m dishes are not easy to stow on a small car and Henry then scaled to 1700mhz the Quad Loop Yagi. This needed testing but was giving us a good signal/noise system and could easily be used for demonstrations, enhancing the sales of all of RIG’s products and giving us an even more increased income.

RIG was invited to attend many rallies and the number increased every year. The RIG LNA had started to be sold and my time involved on RIG work increased considerably. At one committee meeting I asked for help with the rallies as they were then up to about 14 per year, but none was forthcoming and the opposite was the committees response. Why go to the rallies – we can do all the selling via mail! The belief in spontaneous sales was discredited and the committee decided not to sell at rallies. This contravened all my experiences, but I had to go along with their decision with the exception of the already advertised rally at Longleat. The RIG work load/farm work load and increasing domestic problems resulted at the next AGM of Henry not being re-elected as Chairman. I continued as committee member for several meetings but things continued to take a path that I personally thought not to be in RIGs interest and eventually I ceased to attend committee meeting and watched from the sidelines.

The new chairman/committee continued for a few years but eventually even the chairman didn’t attend the AGM! There were problems. At the AGM held at South Minns, Henry was elected to chair that meeting and was then elected as Chairman. The following committee meetings were not – may I say constructive and often resulted in very heated debates about entirely irrelevant items and proved to be very tense. It was very obvious from the start, that things were afoot but the main committee was kept in the dark. It had been advertised in a RIG journal that the next AGM was to be held, which just happened to coincide with arrangements that had been made by others. Our AGM went ahead but there weren’t many attendees. A committee was formed and a few meetings were held. During this time the committee‘s opinion was that we should register as a limited company and Remote Imaging Global was registered at Companies House. Our numbers were depleted and only Dave Cawley and myself were left as really active members. Only two of us meant that we had to retract most activities but keep the RIG Shop active. There wasn’t any articles coming in – so nothing to publish. We had funds and I took the decision that Dave should attend the NOAA conferences to gather information and also represent our members. Dave gave papers at these conferences with a possible result of something for our members, but that hasn’t developed to a stage where we can publicise it yet.

In the mean time several wx equipment companies including Timestep have ceased to supply equipment – so the future is not exactly rosy. Our position has been that in the event of any type of disasters the local infrastructure collapses and any input from the amateur fraternity is welcomed as they have the resources to regain some sort of minimum to give time for the infrastructure to be restored. This restoration may take from days to weeks or even months for things to begin their normal functioning. APT only needed an antennae, a simple rx and a laptop to get some semblance of the basics systems working again. We are now left with having to resort to dishes, LNBs, EKUs – just what someone with major difficulties on their hands really needs! Without power an Amateur would soon have their car charging their laptop battery and any other equipment. Even possibly mains voltage as simple 12v to mains invertors are economically and readily available. The adrenaline starts to flow and wonders soon happen – especially if it is simple.

So – where is RIG now? I have had to care for my mother who had Alzheimers and needed 24/7 care. I could escape for short periods – while I had carers in to look after her. She didn’t quite make her 95th birthday and died in May this year. I am only just catching up on all the jobs that were shelved, or the urgent ones when someone tried to purloin the van, for example. They got in the drivers door, but it wouldn’t start – so they pushed it towards the road – but the brakes were binding on, making it very difficult to push. To escape, without leaving any evidence behind, they burnt the van out whilst it was near to our house! I am now trying to getting some sort of normality back! Dave has kept the show running by looking after the RIG shop and going to the NOAA conferences. Our hobby has changed significantly. Shortly there will be no satellites transmitting APT, so make hay whist the sun shines now! Meteosat is not now available to us – only the regurgitated offerings on 10ghz. NOAA have said that there is not the ability to include the polar satellite HRPT signal as it was and that we will have to use another system. A lot of these images/data can now be downloaded from the internet – anybody can do that! It isn’t at the forefront of techniques like it used to be. That funny noise is a picture! Things have changed – what was cutting edge technology anybody can do.

We have to shake ourselves down and take a fresh look at things and look for a niche that isn’t being filled/developed. There will be some and hopefully RIG will be there to fill it. Timestep that was one of our suppliers has now ceased all lines in wx type equipment. He has now gone into the high end audio market – so make certain that you keep your cheque books well hidden if you are considering any purchases in that area! You have not heard the last of RIG but we are looking for the right time and place before we restart. What was once the done thing often comes around again several years later.

Henry

27/07/2011
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
Ed Murashie reports:

Hi Dave,

I just got back from vacation. I took my two boys, Brian 18 Nathan 17, to Washington DC to celebrate my oldest son graduating from high school. We got to see the 4th of July from DC Mall and the many sights DC has to offer. To get there we got a connecting flight in Dallas and every time I fly though Dallas I can't help but think of our weather satellite interest and Jeff Wallach, Dallas Remote Imaging Group, who lives in Dallas and John Williams who use to but is no longer with us and is in the middle of the attached photo. I am to the left and TS Kelso is to the right of John in the photo. The photo was taken along side the road at the Red Roof Inn where we all stayed during one of the times you moderated the weather satellite talk at Dayton. Ah what fond memories.

You sure were at the forefront of the hobby and devoted a lot of time and energy which we all appreciated and you will be missed. It truly is sad to see the hobby pretty much ending with GTI and now you moving on to other interests. I wish you and Jill the best in your future endeavors. As for me I still dabble in the hobby and am looking forward to the launch of NPP in October and the challenges that it will bring to try and receive it's signal. It still is not the same though with only data appearing across the across the screen unaccompanied with the tick tock sound of APT or WEFAX. We sure got to see and hear our hobby in all it's grandeur! I still manage to have a little fun. In recent years I saw my first GOES launch, I saw the GOES rocket from top to bottom, I have talked at recent launches and am helping to organize a talk for the NPP launch. I even spent an hour looking over the TIROS II engineering model at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on this last trip (see attached photo). So I guess I am not ready to let go yet.

Well say hi to Jill and enjoy your adventure in vinyl reproductions and we still hope to hear from you from time to time!

Ed

06/07/2011
Timestep to close for weather satellites
Dave Cawley from Timestep reports:

It was in 1984 that Henry Neal wrote in Wireless World about his interest in weather satellites and I naively telephoned him. Our popular Two Metre monitor receiver was soon modified and was first reviewed in an early RIG magazine, it was literally the size of 5 biros taped together! At the same time Peter Clapisson wrote in the BBC Computer magazine about a program he had written to decode weather satellites on the BBC Computer. Peter, Brenda and I visited him in Hull. The screen resolution was so bad that it was more of a cartoon than a picture. We launched a product based on it and sold 100's We teamed up with Griffin & George, then the oldest and biggest schools' scientific equipment suppliers.

We made a 1691MHz dipole soldered to a BNC socket and put it in the side of a 1.8M dish pointing at Intelsat (way off beam), and using a Microwave Modules converter we could just receive Meteosat. Dave Allen produced our first feed and Meteosat downconverter. We used portable 3 foot dishes from DH Satellite.

Later Mike Treadaway wrote a program for the Nimbus PC and the resolution was good, this sold 100's too. Dick Boardman wrote two programs to run on the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, these were the first low cost animation systems in the world, they didn't sell well though!

Dave Cutts turned up with some properly designed Frame Store PCB's and with the help of Dave Holmes we produced the World's first proper colour frame store, it sold very well for a long time, you still see them on eBay!

The big breakthrough was employing Peter Arnold in July 1989. I took him straight from Cambridge University and he stayed with us for 11 golden years. Within days Pete had images on the new IBM PS2 with VGA graphics, this was a total revelation as for the first time we had something almost the equal of anything in the world.

Dave Cutts designed the PROscan receiver PCB in mid 1989 and 22 years later this receiver has not had a single change. A young engineer Nigel designed the logic for me, he went on to start his own business and became a millionaire and bought the very last Lamborghini Countach with the registration number (licence plate) N1 GEL. Nigel swapped the logic design for a VCXO design I did for him, we both did well from the swap, him more than me though!

In 1990 I visited John DuBois who with the help of Ed Murashi developed an affordable HRPT system. John generously gave me some floppy discs that held circuits, code and PCB layouts. A few weeks later we took an HRPT pass, it failed, we telephoned John and 90 minutes later we got our first image. The rest is history, and Pete used the philosophy to make PDUS in 1991. NOAA said that we were producing more HRPT systems than anyone.

The golden years were upon us, we dominated the world of weather satellites. Whilst visiting John in 1990 he took me to see John Beanland who was selling the UK Microwave Modules system, that ironically was unknown in the UK, to this day I have never seen the "electric fire" Meteosat antenna. John rejected our PROscan because it used an F socket for the RF input, however a year later was on the phone to buy a box full! We started to go to the Dayton Hamfest were there were 35,000 visitors. It was at the Holiday Inn in Dayton that I saw Steve Padar who walked past, I was in awe, however it turned out Steve was too! Steve has been one of those rare life-long friends (like most here) who travelled from the USA to be at my wedding to Jill.

In 1991 my greatest hero, the inventor of the communications satellite and author of the seminal film 2001, Arthur C Clarke telephoned our office and invited me to Sri Lanka to visit him. Dave Cutts and I went with a GMS system, the word on the street was a 6 foot dish was essential, we got good images with signal to spare, on a 3 foot dish. For a couple of days we had the use of Arthur's long wheelbase Mercedes with the university flag pole. Arthur changed my life when I was 13 and this was possibly the best experience ever. He told us that 2001 was compulsory viewing for all NASA astronauts and Neil Armstrong had given him a piece of moon rock, Dave and I touched it, wow...........

RIG went from strength to strength, JESUG, Weather Satellite Report, Weather Satellite Inc and Short Wave Magazine all covered weather satellites. At Dayton every year, there were about a dozen vendors with something Weather Satellite related on their stand. I organised and ran two residential conferences for RIG with 100+ attendance from many countries of the world. We attended many Super Yacht shows where colour coordinated Bell Jetranger helicopters were as important as a stainless QFH!

The whole 90's were great, like Britannia, we ruled the World. Pete came up with endless software that shocked the World, Peter & Brenda worked all hours to make stuff and Dave designed more PCBs than you could throw a stick at. We were on national TV often, we had a 10 year exhibition in the London Science Museum. Timestep also did a huge amount of design and manufacturing for British Telecom Research and the Inmarsat Corporation, there was no stopping us, or was there?

But then Eumetsat threatened to encrypt the data, the mere threat almost halted sales in their track. BT started to falter and the Internet grew stronger with on line data and images. Then the WMO decided to change the transmissions from easily received data, to Viterbi and Reed Solomon that was/is virtually impossible to make cheaply. In a couple of years everything went wrong, badly wrong, it was time to stop. Pete left but is still working for the same company and still consults to us. In the next short decade several abortive attempts were made and we sold a few dozen APT systems to the world's navies. Rick and Allen from Quorum helped us with a few professional HRPT systems. The end was in sight.

I did several lectures at the NOAA Conferences: 2000 - "WEFAX Private Individual User Community" Silver Spring, Maryland (WEFAX/EMWIN User's Workshop): 2004 - "The Rise and Fall of Amateur Direct Reception of Weather Satellites" (NOAA conference in Miami): 2008 - "Private Individual Users of Weather Satellites" (NOAA conference in Miami : 2011 - "Real Time Access for Private Individual Users of Weather Satellites" (NOAA conference in Miami). These went down well. Thanks to RIG for sponsoring me and to Steve for buying nearly all of the food and drink!

Now 27 years after it all started, it's time to start closing down. Timestep from today will no longer sell any weather satellite products directly to the amateur community and will only sell professional systems until the very small stocks run out, and at an increased price.

A great big thank you to everyone featured here, and those not mentioned too! So it's a happy ending in a sad sort of way! Thanks guys you have been great!

Dave

01/07/2011
Website updated
At last!

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01/07/2011
RIG Shop Closed
But not for ever!

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