41 years ago this week – Apollo 11 and W4EJA
Larry Baysinger W4EJA
I had a landline QSO today with a gentleman in Louisville, Kentucky who is as friendly as he is interesting. Forty-one years ago this week, Larry Baysinger W4EJA accomplished an amazing feat and I wanted to ask him more details about it than exist online. My email to him bounced, so I picked up the phone and was rewarded with one heck of an interesting story.
In July of 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the lunar surface as Michael Collins orbited above them in the Command Module. As the rest of the country – and the world – watched this historic event on television, Larry was receiving their communications directly, independently of NASA or the media networks.
If anyone else was also doing this, no record of it exists. This was, in all likelihood, a First – a private citizen receiving audio communications from the lunar surface. And, if it had been done on any of the following Apollo missions, no record exists of that either.
For 35 minutes, Larry and his friend, Glenn Rutherford, Science Writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal, were able to receive and tape audio conversations between the three astronauts using equipment cobbled together from a variety of sources, originally pieced together in order to experiment with radio astronomy and the reception of weather satellites.
Inspiration for the initial experiments in radio astronomy came from a book on that topic published by the RSGB, and the antenna used was built from a description in that book for a “Garden Antenna for Radio Astronomy”.
The antenna was an 8-foot-on-a-side corner reflector mounted on an alt-az mount. A Ham-M rotor rotated it in azimuth and an old
Alliance rotor controlled the elevation. Larry estimates that the beamwidth was 15-18 degrees; more than that mentioned in the book, which meant that, although gain was decreased, they wouldn’t have to move the antenna as often in order to remain on-target.
The receiver was a 230-250 MHz Korean War-vintage receiver from an Army tank with two 30 MHz IF strips – one for AM and one for FM – and a broad 5 MHz bandwidth that was necessary for radio astronomy, its original (post-Army!) intent. Apollo communications were AM, unscrambled.
According to Larry, two weeks before Apollo 11 took off for the moon, the idea occurred to him that it just might be possible to receive something from the mission using their radio astronomy set-up. Frequencies of prior Apollo missions were unclassified and available to those seeking them. CQ Magazine had two issues in 1969 describing details of Apollo 8 communications. Portions of those articles can be downloaded from here and here as pdf files.
Moon landing skeptics, take note:
As Larry and Glenn listened to the astronauts, Larry’s wife and daughter watched and listened to the televised broadcast in the next room. Larry notes that there was a 5-10 second delay of the televised audio compared to what he and Glenn were hearing directly. Also, although the antenna was motorized, it had to be sighted visually as the rotor controls were operated. To continue copying the astronaut’s audio, the antenna had to be periodically repositioned to compensate for the Earth’s rotation.
For more information on this event, including Larry and Glenn’s taped audio (and an accompanying transcript), photographs and a description of their accomplishment from a 1969 newspaper article, click on over to this site.
Mr. Baysinger, it was a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for sharing your story and 73!
.
.
Radio
| 
DX, Other, personalities
Themocracy
John,
the pleasure was all mine! Your questions caused me to do some “head scratching” in order to recall some of the finer points, but it was a very nice trip down memory lane!
Warmest regards and 73,
Larry R. (Rod) Baysinger, W4EJA
Fantastic article and a fascinating story! I wonder how many would have simply given up after the bounced emails? No question that persistence paid off in this case! Thanks for sharing. 73
I would be very excited to receive signals directly from the moon today. I can only imagine how extremely thrilling it must have been for Larry to have done this back in 1969.
What a great story! Thanks for researching and writing it.
Of course, the skeptics will just claim Larry was part of the conspiracy…
Thanks for the comments.
I agree Dave – you just have to sit back and ponder the technology available to these guys compared to what we have today and also realize the conditions under which they were operating it, with no guarantee of success. Not only is an historic event taking place, but you and your buddy are participating in it “first hand” – and are the only ones doing so in that particular manner. With a receiver from an Army tank! I would like to have been around back then to know those guys – I bet they were a hoot!
Julian, I reckon you’re right about the skeptics. Their disbelief would only add further creedence to my impression of them as near-idiots.