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Experiments

Simultaneous operation of audio server and chart server:

Screenshot below taken 17 May 2011 on the dedicated receiver room PC running numerous applications including TeamSpeak3 server and Radio SkyPipe server, two instances of e-CALLISTO and associated FTP programs, e-CALLISTO light-curve server program, PlanePlotter program and all regular Windows XP services.

The SkyPipe chart below is overlaid by the TS3 server window and a Symmetricom network time protocol application (SymmTime). Jumps (discontinuities) in the chart indicate times when CPU load reached 100%. The audio source is an Icom R75 receiver tuned to WWVH on 15 MHz.

Five time hacks at the start of each minute can be seen on the chart. When this screenshot was made there was one client connection toTeamSpeak3 (T61) and zero client connections to SkyPipe.


Radio JOVE Experiments

The receiver system for Radio JOVE experiments consists of two Icom R-75 high-frequency (HF) receivers.  For most experiments, only one R-75 receiver is used.  A block diagram of a typical receiver setup is located here.

The receiver Automatic Gain Control (AGC) is turned off.  The receiver generally is fixed tuned to 20.1 MHz in lower sideband (LSB) or Amplitude Modulation (AM) mode but, depending on interference conditions, the receiver (or receivers) may be tuned somewhere between 20.1 and about 21.0 MHz. 

Although the receiver system is tuned and setup before and not adjusted during each experiment, it is controlled for certain experiments using a customized version of Ham Radio Deluxe software.  The receiver audio RECORD OUT jack is connected to the station PC soundcard LINE IN jack.  The soundcard is set to 11.025 kHz bandwidth, 16 bit, Mono, 21 kb/sec sampling rate when using one receiver and Stereo with 43 kb/sec sampling rate when using two receivers.

Software for Jupiter Studies:  During experiments, the PC runs SkyPipe software, which samples the receiver audio and provides a stripchart feature that displays and logs the audio output level at predetermined intervals.  The software also has an audio recording feature to allow aural correlation with the visual stripchart.  The stripchart is set to sample the receiver audio 10 times per second (100 msec sampling period).  Radio-Jupiter Pro 3 is used to predict the best times for Radio JOVE experiments.