China Launches Another Manned Mission to Space

JIUQUAN, CHINA - JUNE 11: (CHINA OUT) The Long March-2F rocket carrying China's manned Shenzhou-10 spacecraft blasts off from launch pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on June 11, 2013 in Jiuquan, Gansu Province of China. China's latest manned spacecraft blasted off on a 15-day mission to dock with a space lab.

I'm always glad to see a successful space launch.

Radio

I got the link to Engineering Radio from Roberta X, and I'm finding all kinds of good stuff over there. A post about low power FM stations got me going.
    When I was younger I always had the FM radio in my car playing rock and roll. DJ's and ads were something you had to put up with to get the music. Nowadays whenever I turn on the radio, I seldom find any music, much less any music I want to listen to. The most reliable stations play classic rock and I have heard all of those songs to death.
    A while back there was a guy doing some work in the yard and he had a radio playing. It was tuned to some talk station, and whoever it was that was on the air sounded really angry. He just ranted on and on and on. I almost asked the guy how he could stand to listen to it, but I decided that maybe I didn't want to know.
    The only thing I like to listen to in the car anymore is audio books, but since I don't drive everyday, it makes it kind of difficult to maintain continuity, not to mention they want real money for audio books, I don't have a CD player in my truck, and the library doesn't have books on tape.

Suppression of Ideas

By Paul Thurst, on May 1st, 2013 9 comments

I found this video called Empire of Noise about broadcast radio jamming. It seems to be about ten years old and is a post cold war documentary about the jamming of radio signals by the USSR, Warsaw Pact counties and China.  It is an interesting look into the extent and expense that governments will go to to suppress counter thought and ideas.

The video is quite long, and there are stretches of jamming noise that can be annoying, but perhaps that is the point.  It is worth the time if interested in history and radio broadcasting.  You know what they say about history; those that do not understand history are destined to repeat it.

A few of the highlights:

• The former Soviet Union had the most extensive jamming network of anyone on Earth.  There were groundwave jamming centers in eighty one Soviet cities which consisted of approximately 10-15 transmitters each in the 5 KW covering the medium and shortwave frequencies.
• Each groundwave jamming station consisted of a transmitter site and a receiver/control site.  The receiver site possessed lists of frequencies to monitor, when objectionable material was heard, the jamming transmitters were turned on.
• There was a skywave jamming network consisting of 13 jamming stations with 10 or more 100-200 KW transmitter in each.  There were some transmitters in the 1,000 KW power range.  These were located in Krasnodar, Lvov, Nikolaev, Yerevan, Alma-Ata, Grigoriopol, Sovieck, Novosibrisk, Tashkent, Khanbarovsk, Servdlosk and Moscow (some of these names may have changed).  These operated in a similar fashion to the groundwave jammers.
• After sign off of government stations, Soviet jammers sent a blanketing signal on the IF frequency (most likely 455 KHz) of receivers to effectively block them from receiving any station while USSR government stations were off the air.
• Baltic states had 11 jamming stations with approximately 140 transmitters
• Ukraine had approximately 300 Jamming transmitter.
• Warsaw Pact countries had extensive medium frequency jamming networks.
• It is estimated it takes about 20 times the transmitted power to jam any one signal.

The entire jamming network was hugely expensive to equip and operate, costing several tens of millions of dollars per year.

It is interesting that the US position in all of this was:

Everyone has the right to seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers.   Jamming of radio broadcasts is condemned as the denial of the right of persons to be fully informed concerning news, opinions and ideas.

Sounds perfectly reasonable.  The free exchange of ideas and information over the internet is something that should be guarded carefully and should not be restricted or censored.  Perhaps somebody should inform congress.

Stolen entire from Engineering Radio

Ancient History, Teenage Accidents

1967 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396

Dustbury mentioned a 1966 Chevy II Super Sport in a post this morning, and it reminded me of these true life horror stories.
    I had a friend by the name of Richard Bagley in Bexley, Ohio back in 1969. His father bought a Chevelle Super Sport 396. It was the be all and end all of all cars. You couldn't ask for anything better. Richard took it out one evening and ended up dead when he let somebody else drive it and they took an exit ramp off the Interstate at 100 MPH.
   There was another guy, John Veatch, from my high school in Utica. He wasn't a friend, but we were friendly. He got killed driving a car on the freeway in Newark. He was going over 100 MPH. He hit a road sign 12 feet off the ground.
    I think there were four people in each car. I don't think I knew any of the other people, and I don't recall if there were any other fatalities, but I knew these two guys.
    Then there was a girl from Granville who has a serious accident on her bicycle. Her brakes failed while she was going down a hill. I think she must have broke her pelvis or something. She was in a cast from the waist down for months.

Eurocopter X3 reaches speed of 255 knots

Twin 2000 HP turbines drive the main rotor as well as the two propellers. There must be some fancy mechanicals in there because the props are driven at different speeds (the right hand prop runs faster because it also acts as the anti-torque reactor), and the main rotor speed is independent of the prop speed.

Isle of Man TT Motorcycle Race

Guy Martin on a Suzuki GSXR 1000 Superbike going around the course.
Stu put up a post and I've kind of been paying attention. It's been going on for the last two weeks. 200 MPH on a motorcycle on an ordinary road is kind of impressive. This might be the last real road race for bikes in the world, well, at least until the 3rd world gets into the act. I've watched several videos, and this is the one I like best. He doesn't actually manage to outrun the chopper, but the camera does lose track of him for a few seconds. Bonus is that nobody dies in this video. I don't like watching the ones with the bad accidents. Seeming them once was enough.

Counting the Seconds

I really don't like waiting. If there is even a single car ahead of me at the gas station, I will go on to the next station. I may end up using more time to do that than if I just sat and waited, but at least I am in motion, not sitting there dying. Besides, if you are sitting there waiting, Murphy's law says that the car in front of you is going to have a problem and they are going to be stuck there for the rest of the day. You will get blocked in and be unable to move, and then terrorists will attack and blow up the gas station and you will die a horrible death in a blazing inferno. So, no, I'm not gonna sit and wait on mis-dis-efficient.
    I don't like traffic lights. They are so sloooooowwwwww. I have learned to cope by counting the seconds I have to wait. I find that most of the lights at big intersections run on a one minute cycle. These are the ones where you have dedicated left turn lanes and signals, so you have four groups taking turns. Occasionally you will run into a big intersection, like one with five or six points that runs closer to two minutes. Counting the seconds gives me something to do until light turns green. I will have a bill for the traffic gods when I die.
    Traffic jams are another unpleasant fact of life on the freeway. I try and notice the time when I am forced to a crawl, and then try and imitate a zombie until things clear up. Suprisingly, most of these messes clear up within five minutes. Yes, rush hour is an exception. Just stay at work. Or walk. Funny how there is no place close by to work that is really inviting.