This box gives off more “built up to a spec, not down to a price” vibes than any other piece of gear I’ve seen. Great video!

@aserta

2 жыл бұрын

"Price? What's price, precious?" The builder wizards, probably.

@absurdengineering

2 жыл бұрын

It definitely doesn’t leak RF out the seams :)

I love how people from various places are all coming together to get this working, especially with the rental equipment.

I know it seems inconsequential, but I do L-O-V-E when everyone goes to great lengths to get the micro-switches and panel lights working correctly. Detail and Completion-ism is a beautiful thing.

Electrorent! They provided the equipment I used to develop an in-house command tone generator. I'm sure I was their favorite customer of 1992 while at OSC. If it says HP, Agilent, or KeySight on it, they probably have one in stock somewhere.

This episode somehow rams home to me the mind-boggling technological changes between my father's birth in 1924 and those first television pictures from the moon. Only forty-five years, but what years! Of course I could dial back the years to be considered to 21 if I just stop at the culmination of the Manhattan Project. If only human nature had changed in step (and in a positive way) duing those years.

@vincei4252

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, it was an astounding level of progress. However, you'd be surprised how advanced some of the literature was even in the 20's and 30's when it came to describing the function of vacuum tubes in amplifiers and RF circuits. I have a book on vacuum tubes that is about 80 years old that still surprises me to this day when I leaf through it.

@josephpadula2283

2 жыл бұрын

I sat on the couch with my grandmother one day watching the space shuttle take off. When she was born the Wright brothers had not publicly shown their first plane!

@twotone3070

2 жыл бұрын

Sadly someone will always want to use the advances for their own greed and power.

Seeing those lovely wiring harnesses reminds me of the diagrams and rules in the NASA standards for wiring that I was just revisiting the other day.

" . . all the keysight instruments sponsored by electrorant" I had to rewind just to be sure you didn't say something about "electroboom sponsored by keysight". Exciting process here. Thanks for taking us along!

Always great to see a new video, Marc. We all know about Sprague caps spilling their guts all over the place when powered on after years of disuse. I had a line filter in a DNA sequencer that would also trip the breakers in the panel so I hooked it up to the other end of an isolation transformer so the unit could stay up long enough for me to root the Linux server inside it.

Those were the days when Motorola was a world-class company.

@MichaelOfRohan

2 жыл бұрын

They still absolutely were until very recently

@mnoxman

2 жыл бұрын

Motorola Solutions is still world class but a shadow of what they used to be.

That kind of breaker will actually trip for either of two reasons. Current flowing out on the hot wire that does not return on the neutral wire (white wire) which means power is coming back to the panel on ground (ground fault) OR it also detects any kind of arcing fault. AFCI was a great addition to breakers and as such prevents a lot of electrical fires now due to poor quality (degraded) connections in switches, receptacles, and also any kind of arcing in appliances or other loads as well which are fire the most common cause of electrical fires.

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

Amen.

@urlkrueger

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I remember the time the heating element in my kitchen oven failed. It was like a welding arc inside the oven hissing and throwing out brilliant light. I waited for the breaker to trip but it never did so I finally got brave and used the control knob on the oven to turn the power off. Because of that I understand the value of arc-fault interrupters.

@fredflintstone8048

2 жыл бұрын

@@urlkrueger Yes, drawing creating arcs and sparks won't necessarily draw enough current to trip the breaker. Arc welders don't trip their breakers when operating at less overall current than the breaker rating. Reaction times of breakers are also a function of where the current happens to be in relation to their rating.

@fredflintstone8048

2 жыл бұрын

@@uploadJ The way that GFCI breakers actually work is that they compare the current going out on the hot (black wire or whatever color that's connected to the breaker lug) and compare the current coming back on it's neutral (white wire on the breaker). They are set to trip when the delta goes above a certain level. They don't literally monitor the current on the ground. Ideally all the current going out on the hot should be returning on it's neutral.

@jimstanley_49

2 жыл бұрын

My portable AC didn't like being plugged into an AFCI circuit in my bedroom. It always laboured getting the compressor up to speed. Eventually, I put it on a (beefy) extension cord to the hallway and it was much happier.

Just wanted to say how much I love the turbine spin up sound at the beginning of the intro for this series.

@JonTheBrush

2 жыл бұрын

That's not a turbine, it's his washing machine ....

heyy look at that Heathkit! 11:19 I love all the gear you're using on this project from giant test equipment to the humble condenser checker :D

I can't say enough about how excited it makes me to see all this wonderful equipment come alive again in your lab. It is great to see all these experts involved, both young and old. I am also impressed with all the wonderful test equipment you always have on hand for RF work. And every time you receive something to do with this communications project, I can't wait to watch it. I didn't realize such sophisticated and well-built equipment could be constructed in those days. It is amazing what smart people with a good cause and a blank check could do then. And they had to do most everything the hard way. Just amazing. Marc, thanks so much for the video. After this series, I hope you will have an opportunity to take on more RF related projects in the future. Best wishes to you all.

@Digital-Dan

2 жыл бұрын

Further, this was all developed and built within very small numbers of years, in order to meet the JFK challenge. Quick and clean engineering, I guess.

BRILLIANT! Some of the best work found here on KZread.

I was just about okay with the AGC - digital is fast and a bit squirrely, but Marc is right about the blackest of black arts. I used to struggle working on MRI's at only Megahertz, but this stuff is RF Alchemy! Great vlog guys, you are remaking history.

@ReneSchickbauer

2 жыл бұрын

This turned from "let's play with some Apollo comms equipment" to "we are building a sophisticated space engineering RF lab" rather quickly.

@matthewpower3062

2 жыл бұрын

@@ReneSchickbauer ... every simple project I ever started

@alakani

2 жыл бұрын

*shudders in Correlating EEG, filtered tfMRI, nearest neighbor PNG data in realtime* So when are you coming over with a forklift?

Mikey, the pronunciation of Sprague is illustrated in their ad campaign of 60 years ago - "Don't be vague, ask for Sprague"

@josephpadula2283

2 жыл бұрын

Correct vague Sprauge!

Outstanding! I always marvel at that stuff from the era. I was just a little kid during the first moon landing. That box must have cost a fortune and a half to build back then.

Hope its soon. I saw Master Ken hanging about. I guess he didn't have anything to do. It is surprising or rather not suprising how robust these electronics are. As usual its the caps that fail. Great vlog. It is really discovering hidden history in a way that no other youtube or indeed any other channel does that know of.

Of all impressive stuff from this project, and apart from the skills of the magicians involved, the fact that these equipment just turn on and work at the same frequency after being off for decades is what blows my mind the most.

I love how the peaks on the newest Keysight analyzer screen danced to the same tune as we listened the closing credits at the end of the episode.

Since watching this, I instantly saw the Arecibo antenna , and wondered when these folks did that amazing feet of greatness. Due to the receiver smashing through the dish 😓 which is a real shame. Such an icon...

Oooh! I have a very similar Heathkit condenser checker! Restored it last year!

What a great restoration project. Wish you all the best with it!

This is amazing, exploring this looks so much fun

Without a doubt this is one of the best channels on KZread. An electronic Walhalla, you guys are really super. The only thing missing is the cape! Brilliant stuff and a true pleasure to watch each and every episode. Great humor, too.

It’s amazing that the transmitter (as other Apollo staff) was able to run after such long time laying off. Filter caps as ever are nightmare. But HP staff is also super. At the end of this series you (and all the guys) will know so much technical details that you could write a service manual. Why not? All this is over the top!

Great job Mark and Co

Dang I almost wish I still lived in Sunnyvale so I could try to chill with you guys and press some Apollo buttons, but I had to save all that rent money for bioprinters and lasers. Now I live kinda near Cody's lab. Come over and let's make Tribbles! :p

absolute insane work... can't wait to see the next one...

The one thing I would like to see from you guys, is how you hand-weave programs into the core memory of an Apollo computer. And then lose your sanity. :D

It will be exciting to see the latest and greatest side-by-side with the tried and true, all from HP/Agilent/Keysight!

Very interesting, Marc and crew.

Funny thing is some retired NASA employee has those crystals in home office desk, the day changed them stuck in his pocket forgot about them. lol... Love the work. when we are building NEW rocket. Ready to go Moon

the chassis construction looks like some high end audio amplifiers for example the Dartzeel line

looking forward to next episode

this series just keeps exceeding every time i watch.

It's like Christmas every time one of these videos comes out.

Remember the electronic magazines that had kits you could build stuff over the course of a few months? Marc must've found a magazine that contains the entire Apollo mission!

yea kind of glad I was born in 79, that's a lot of effort for what its doing, what it was designed to do is beyond impressive, what its actually doing on the other hand ...

I picked up a motorola console stereo in mint condition for 40 dollars on FB market. The build quality is unlike anything I've seen. They really did make some good electronics.

incredible work. highly interesting.

This is amazing, this looks so interesting! 😁

It is the best serial I've ever seen )

@soulrobotics

2 жыл бұрын

I wish someone capture the Snoopy LM some day, and put it in an orbit so Marc and the team paly with it...

I am fascinated with your pursuit of happiness. Please, tell me more.

I love those eyes but I’ve only seen them in old radios, I also love those illuminated switches. And it’s all over 50 years old now.

@Scrapy-ih7ob

2 жыл бұрын

those type switched are still used in Aircraft, not as complicated but Gulfstream used them in the G3 , I dropped plenty of those tiny ass bulbs in cock pit had search for them.

Only made more amazing by the quantity of that older test equipment that you ALSO repaired, just to be able to work on the Apollo stuff.

Marvellous stuff, does CuriousMarc explain somewhere in his videos how he knows so much about all this RF stuff and pretty much anything EE related? Did he work as an R&D guy, did he had some role model teacher or is he just a bookworm? I really appreciate this depth of knowledge and would like myself to get in the same cloud of wisdom to push my engineering skills in work and private.

@DaveWilliamsj

2 жыл бұрын

Marc has done quite some RnD and has several RF/optical patents I believe.

@SkigBiggler

2 жыл бұрын

From his site: In real life, I am a tech executive in Silicon Valley. I hold a Ph.D. in Opto-Electronics from University of Paris. I am a former Bell Labs researcher, an Intel Fellow and founder of several tech startups in Silicon Valley, all related to high-speed fiber optics communications. I have over 60 U.S. patents and published over 100 refereed papers.

@jackmacdonald8499

2 жыл бұрын

@@SkigBiggler wow. Just wow...

@hoofie2002

2 жыл бұрын

His resume makes it clear he has a professional background but even as an Electronics Engineer I find his style very engaging and he is excellent at making VERY complex engineering constructs easy to grasp .

11:38 I can hear the mains hum leaking through Marc, and again at 12:01 😸

Absolutely amazing!!!!!

That's top of the wave electronics!

This is sooooo Fantastic!

I absolutely love your videos its rings to my heart for computers and electronics you have the job from heaven to me to see your stuff is awesome. Your intelligence is beyond belief

Great work!

I'll be 1st to admit, most of this technical stuff is way above my paygrade, nevertheless, I'm fascinated and thoroughly enjoy your journey. I'm curious, why do you think NASA switched frequencies on your receiver and transmitter? Would it have been for better performance or were they wanting to have separate frequencies for different spacecrafts? Thanks so much for taking the time to share this info! Keep it up.

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

Switched to test another spacecraft most probably

@EricLikness

2 жыл бұрын

@@CuriousMarc Maybe save that mystery of "which" space craft the crystal was swapped-in for future episodes. I wonder if it may be Shuttle flights? Unless it was Skylab, who knows?

Another 3 phase power unit ? - anyways Marc - I have a few of those fuse holders - even lighted ones!

Thanks awsome as always! Can u do a caveDive 2022 😅🇸🇪👍

I see the kings chamber and the queens chamber of the RF device.

More gold plates NASA RF goodness... Looks like next episode, Marc gets to play with the _big boy toys_ I'm surprised you could not pull in Keysight themselves to set that up for you :D Cheers,

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

I have Keysight on speed dial now. They contributed the extra licenses for the phase mod features, a 1G scope, a function generator...

@EngineeringVignettes

2 жыл бұрын

@@CuriousMarc - Niiice. I wish I had that.. maybe get a better deal on some 5G Fronthaul (O-DU/O-RU) test gear... Cheers,

@I967

2 жыл бұрын

It's free advertising and the most flattering. Keysight can put it in their CV now: "Our equipment was instrumental in restoration of historic Apollo missions equipment." You don't want to miss that kind of opportunity. Also the best kind of advertising is to have your equipment used and demonstrated by someone very competent, dealing with unique problems. Specifically Marc, Mike, Ken, Carl and all the other men of brains I can't recall at the moment.

I like the total assault with HP instruments battery .

I am curious about which post-Apollo space mission this equipment was re-tuned for: is it as simple as looking up mission data for follow on missions? SkyLab? Viking? Voyager?

Anyone else notice the hum which started when the capacitor was connected at 11:37, continues until it's removed at 11:58, and then the same again with the bad cap? It looks to be around 50-60Hz so it because the instrument probe is grounded via the cap and Marc?

Now I wonder what the AE Program (Project 4260) is, or whatever F. Landspurg's notebook #72-2905 says at pages 1 & 2. ref: 1:43

@ehamster

2 жыл бұрын

Viking?

14:49 Did it switch rfout on autonomously?

Do you have any computer related videos planned? I really enjoyed the hp-9825 and ps/2 series

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

Yes we have plenty of old computers to restore…

Gorgeous mil-spec construction.

Amazing !!!

Would running a isolation transformer eliminate this tripping? I realize your area electrical codes may dictate using a GFI breaker, but these breakers are too sensitive .

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

No GFCI are good! They alerted us of a latent fault that would have ended pretty badly. There must have been 10’s of mA already flowing through that deteriorating cap.

I understand nothing but I am completely fascinated

Marvellousness.

Love it.

Shouldn’t you tune it in the correct orientation? With gravity effecting the crystal it might make a difference. Amazing equipment and work you guys are doing there.

Marc posts.. I click like! too bad there is no LOVE button!

The condo I owned for 40+ years had an old GFCI panel breaker. The EMI filter on my beloved R390A would blow that breaker even though the resistance either side of the line to neutral was in the megaohm range on a Fluke handheld meter. The house I am in now - well - this is not a possible issue. It's 120 years old with knob and tube wiring with no ground wires. I make do. I just be careful++. {^_-}

It's going to be sad to see all of this gear split back up again and sent back to it's individual homes at the end of this.

As someone with a test equipment addiction how do you find so many good gems?

"Do you think we should test the limits? How far does it go?"

"I love gold the look of it the taste of it the smell of it the texture. "

Awesome

Do you mind if I share this with the guys in Australia working on restoring NASA equipment at the Australian Apollo 11 museum in Canarvon Western Australia. NASA had 3 or more dishes in Australia not just Parkes setup .

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

Sure, we’d love to hear from them too!

Oh. It's _actually_ gold. It wasn't just poetic prose. lol

I cant stop wondering how those cases were manufactured. They look like they are made out of a solid block of gold, which of course isnt the case. But even if they are machined out a solid block of anything and gold plated would still be absolutely unheard of.

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

@@bobroberts2371 Sure not. This is real gold plating for the best RF shielding!

@stephenbell9257

2 жыл бұрын

We are very fortunate that this historic piece of equipment didn't get into the hands of a recycler. They would have totally destroyed it just to recover the gold content.

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

@@stephenbell9257 You bet, that's exactly what happened to most of the stuff. That's a problem with the HP vintage instrument and computer boards also, people recycle them for the gold. Poor Al Kossow even had his storage place broken in, and they stole all his precious HP 1000 boards to recover the gold!

@hoofie2002

2 жыл бұрын

Probably physical vapour deposition of gold onto the aluminium done in a chamber at low pressure. If it's spaceflight or military grade test gear specification rules not price. Those boxes would have been mind numbingly expensive to build.

ElectroRent... not to be confused in any way, shape, or form with ElectroBoom *fingers crossed*

Bonjour, merci pour vos vidéo. je me permet de vous parler en français car j'ai cru comprendre que vous le parlé. En ce moment j'ai un soucis je ne peux avoir les sous-titres avec certaines chaines KZread, est-ce une option à activer de votre part ou un soucis avec KZread. Encore merci

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

Il faut attendre quelques heures ou parfois quelques jours avant que les sous-titres automatiques n’apparaissent. De temps en temps ils n’apparaissent même pas. Ensuite ça me prend un jour ou deux pour les corriger, et si j’ai le courage et le temps, je fais aussi une traduction en français.

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

Michel, rien que pour vous, j'ai fait la traduction aujourd'hui :-)

@michelgiustina1124

2 жыл бұрын

@@CuriousMarc Merci

Fun fact. CuriousMarc actually is the voice for the Sponge Bob interludes.

Amazing the caps in these things are still as good as they are. NOT COMMERCIAL GRADE?

@stargazer7644

2 жыл бұрын

Caps used to be reliable before China got into the act with their counterfeit/crap parts.

@johnvrabec9747

2 жыл бұрын

@@stargazer7644 Globalism created our throwaway society, and that's not a political comment, just fact. It's a good thing/bad thing conundrum. Build something of high quality that costs more but lasts for decades or build it cheaply, but you can throw it away and get 4 others over the years. the attention to detail and top notch engineering and manufacturing is why this Apollo era equipment still works AS DESIGNED, minus a few blown bulbs and leaky caps. I don't comprehend the minutiae of these systems, but the way everyone explains them, I can hang and learn and be awed. Major kudos for all them!

@stargazer7644

2 жыл бұрын

@@johnvrabec9747 The bad cap epidemic had nothing to do with globalism and our throwaway society. It had to do with fraud. Globalism is what drives our throwaway society because it is far cheaper to buy a new one than it is to fix an old one. That's because people in places like China will work making these things for a wage no American would accept to fix one.

@johnvrabec9747

2 жыл бұрын

@@stargazer7644 No, China makes them because US business owners want the cheapest labor to drive profits. It takes 2 to tango. Just like US companies hiring illegals here, American workers were manufacturing EVERYTHING until business found slave labor outside the US. Now the government is IMPORTING slave labor so their business cronies can fatten up. You have people trying to unionize here in the US (Amazon, Starbucks) but they are being spied on and other tactics because the labor market is being reduced to very unskilled people that will literally work for pennies to come to the US and get all the freedoms and goodies the government rolls out to them.

Does it use a ARMSTRONG FM Modulator ?

is that all gold plating in that box?

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

It is.

Which tool looks out of place in this scene... The rubber mallet??? :-) Don't even want to know how that was used.

@CuriousMarc

2 жыл бұрын

It's for precision and delicate repairs. Nudging a bond wire back into place, straightening core memory, repairing old mechanical wrist watches, making fine adjustments on HP instruments, etc... Nah. It was used to nudge the cards out of Ken's updata box. They were hopelessly stuck in there and needed serious convincing to come out. None were hurt in the process.

I wonder if in 50 years time some more nerds will be reverting this kit to the modified spec in order to get some skunkworks piece of declassified kit working 😝

każdy przycisk współczesnej windy jest takim mikro kontrolerem, mogę sobie jedynie wyobrazić kod i narzędzia

Coool! :-)

should you carrier be 2.2528Ghz

Fabulous ^2

One year later: we found the whole Apollo spacecraft while deep diving in the barn! Can we launch it into space?☻

To think all of this amazing tech of the 70's was built by the lowest bidder.

Se guy in the fcc basement..what the hell is that doing on...lol

I love all the work you're doing to bring this equipment back to Apollo spec. But I'm beginning to worry that you might be locking out an extant, if dormant, spacecraft.

Wood 😶😶

😍😍😍😍😍

o my. this is a step back in time... now if Tom Edison had youtube it would be cool watching those inventions. 😊you smart guys need to hack into putin's tanks and turn them off. 🤣