As WUWT readers know, I covered a fascinating project on 3/31 here showing how a team of dedicated technical archaeologists are trying the get old AMPEX 2″ reel to reel data recorders functional again so that they can recover thousnads of moon and earth images from the 1960’s that would otherwise be lost to history. There is a current scientific interest in the images, as some may help determine the extent of polar ice during those years.
I’ve offered WUWT as a vehicle to help find parts and manuals. You may have access to these things and not know it. Ask around, especially with the old-timers in your department, and check your dusty basements and storage areas. – Anthony
A message from Dennis Wingo:
The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), is a NASA ESMD funded project to recover the original Lunar Orbiter analog data which was recorded on an Ampex FR-900 2″ video instrumentation recorder. As far as we know, we have the last surviving drives of this type in the world. We have retired Ampex engineers working with us on this project but the FR-900 was a limited use machine (exclusively the U.S. government at the FAA, USAF, NASA).
What we need is to find any possible source of documentation (we know about the Stanford Archive and have been there many times) for the FR-900 or the possibility of actual machines.
There are similar machines with the numbers FR-901, FR-902, FR-950 that are close enough that we can use any information on them.
Please email to Anthony (or drop a comment below) and he will forward to me or drop us a note at www.moonviews.com
Thanks very much!!!
Dennis Wingo
LOIRP Project Lead
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Hi
if you look here: http://www.myradioroom.com/manualsales.html this chap has Ampex 900 series manual.
Hope this helps
Charlie
Re Geoff (7:37)
That’s science for ya. Got to be prepared for answers that don’t fit your agenda!
It’s pretty much known, unlike the Arctic there have been bases etc. there for some time.
Example, gives info from 1955…
http://acsys.npolar.no/meetings/final/abstracts/posters/Session_3/poster_s3_107.pdf
Sorry to continue the other OT responses:
Robert Wood (02:41:03)
Ryan C (05:41:08)
Regarding:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1453831&p=2
Using the reporting of NOAA’s study, I’ve estimated that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is ~1.65C.
Here’s the relevant bits from the National Post story:
—snip—
Some of the changes in North America’s warming trend of the past half-century have been due to shifting ocean currents, the NOAA team found. It estimates the “natural” change is substantial and could be close to half of all warming in North America (though it is still less than the amount caused by greenhouse gases.)
The study found:
– The 56-year trend of annual surface temperature showed a rise of 0.9C, plus or minus one-tenth of a degree.
…
– Seven of the warmest 10 years since 1951 occurred in the decade from 1997 to 2006. The data in the study cover only to the end of 2007.
—snip—
So a bit more than half of the 0.9C increase is due to GW. I’ll use 0.9C * 55% = ~0.5
I’ll also use the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements for the study start and end dates:
1951: 311 ppm
2007: 383 ppm
If I understand it correctly, the change in temp can be calculated as:
tempchange = forcefactor * ln(CO2[end]/CO2[start])
so:
forcefactor = tempchange / ln(CO2[end]/CO2[start])
Plugging in the above values we get:
forcefactor = 0.5 / ln(383/311)
forcefactor = 2.4
And sensitivity to doubling of CO2 as:
sensitivity = forcefactor * ln(2)
sensitivity = 1.65C
This is significantly less than the 3.0C estimated by the model ensemble used by the IPCC.
Also interesting, this is also consistent with Bill Illis’s analysis from a while back:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/25/adjusting-temperatures-for-the-enso-and-the-amo/
AJ
Anthony, I just sent you email to the “info” address that has some information concerning other uses of the FR-900 and a name of someone else who was extremely well-versed in those units (apparently an Ampex factory rep for the 900 series recorders). Sadly he has recently tossed his manuals but does give some ideas on where additional units were used.
“Some of the changes in North America’s warming trend of the past half-century have been due to shifting ocean currents, the NOAA team found. It estimates the “natural” change is substantial and could be close to half of all warming in North America”
I wonder what we would get if we added up all the things that have been reported over the years to account for “close to half” of warming. I seem to see that bandied around a bit. I think the same thing was said of “adjustments” to raw temperature data, too.
AJ,
Thanks for the analysis. But as Crosspatch mentions, does the CO2 sensistivity of 1.65 C that you calculated only includes the role of CO2, or does it include other factors (mentioned in the next sentence) when the shift in ocean currents was excluded from the temperature trend? If the latter, then the “man-made” temperature rise includes not only the role of CO2, but land-use changes, lower emissions of aerosols, more emissions of brown haze, UHI effect, etc. One wonders how much warming is left that can be solely placed on CO2.
While I’m sure readers here will be a huge resource in finding mothballed parts for the tape transports, the other side of the equation not yet mentioned concerns the datatapes themselves.
It turns out that stored datatapes age and deteriorate as a function of time, manufacturing process and storage technique. Fortunately, there is a wealth of restoration knowledge in the Music and Movie industries, as they have been down this road before. Problems encountered include magnetic print though which corrupts the data, embrittled mylar substrates, and physical loss of oxide. There are mitigations to these problems, but the processes are complex and time consuming.
Believe me, there is nothing worse than clogging up your antique tape heads by shredding 30 year old crumbling oxide into them. Take the time to learn how to bake a tape.
Chris… this OT discussion needs to be taken somewhere else. Maybe Anthony will post as a separate topic? Wouldn’t want Dennis to have to filter through this.
But… I know what you’re saying and I agree. This is just a simple, back of the envelope analysis. All the usual caveats apply as well as the debate about what temperature record (land/satellite) is best.
Dennis Wingo
If you need some ultra high resolution flexibility with better stability see:
Jackson Labs FireFox Synthesizers with GPS Frequency Reference
For $2.5k, they provide:
Their “accuracy” is a tad bit better than 100 ppb.
i.e. Allan Deviations of 1E-011.
That would allow you to adjust to whatever frequency the original tape was actually recorded, or digitally compensate for thermal drift.
See: Jackson-Labs.com
There used to be a place in Sunnyvale, and Mountainview, California (name varied over the years–HalTeds, HalTec, maybe others. The last time I was there the store was on Eveyln in Sunnyvale.
He bought box-car lots of government surplus junk to get the hydraulics parts for his main business.
Is Ampex still in Redwood City–they might have contacts or stuff.
CollectSpace reports:
Any chance one of these Ampex recorders might still exist in Spain or Australia?
Larry
We visit HalTed often!
David Hagen
That is VERY interesting. Our machine actually has two USO’s. The 1 Mhz seems to be working find but we have another, lower frequency one that we really need to replace. Thanks much.
Bigbub
Thanks, we have retired Ampex engineers that are expert in this. We are EXTREMELY fortunate that NASA did a really good job in storing these tapes and packaging them. We have had far fewer problems with them than I would have thought.
Crosspatch
I cannot tell you how many times we have heard similar stories of recently tossed manuals over the last six months.
Charlie
Yea we saw that several months ago and contacted the fellow but for some reason he did not want to sell us a manual.
TNSpotter
I helped to get an entire collection of film and glass images moved from Tuscaloosa to the Space and Rocket Center. I also work with the archives at the University of Alabama in Huntsville so am pretty familiar with what is around in Huntspatch. Thanks
atmoaggie
Yep, yet again this plays out in a way that we have heard a lot lately. This is why I really thank anthony for the forum to see what else may be out there that may not have met the same fate.
Thanks to everyone for your comments and suggestions. We will follow up with some as soon as I get back to California on Monday.
Mr. Wingo
Try Kansas Cosmosphere at cosmo.org. They specialize in space artifact restoration and replication. They may have manuals or parts.
http://www.cosmo.org/restore.htm
http://www.cosmo.org/re_spaceworks.htm
Mr. Watts
Thank you for the great service and site!
glf
It sounds like the hardware problems are well-understood, albeit a lot of work.
What’s being done about the tape itself? You can’t just pull it out of the tins and thread it up.
Find the NSN and equipment designation for all of the branches of the military in the search for a manual. I don’t know the equipment manufacturers or models, but the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity on Camp Pendelton used a large number of tape drives for data acquisition in the MarTacDataSys program. The manuals might be in archive.
Call “JRPS” – the Record/Playback Station in the LCC at the Kennedy Space Center. Explain your quest and ask for the home phone number of Mr. Welch (now retired for ten years). JRPS: (321) 861-0830 (could be 867-0830). My phone list is ten years old.
They use 1″ tape now, but Welch would remember.
FYI, this site has schematics for FR-900; also has manuals but I didn’t see the specific one:
http://ppk.infomg.net/Ampex_Manuals/Ampex_Misc/
Good hunting,
BillN
I watch the NASA channel on TV quite a bit and they often show old movies of moon landings. Have you check them out to see just what they have?
“There used to be a place in Sunnyvale, and Mountainview, California (name varied over the years–HalTeds, HalTec, maybe others. The last time I was there the store was on Eveyln in Sunnyvale.”
That would be Halted (HSC). There is also a HUGE place that never advertises and I don’t remember their name but they were on De la Cruz near San Jose airport. They had absolutely racks and racks of stuff going back decades … tubes, crystal ovens, variable capacitors, chokes. I believe their retail operation is now closed. It might have been RA Enterprises.
There is also Weird Stuff back behind Lockheed on Caribbean (I believe Mathilda in Sunnyvale eventually curves around and becomes Carobbean). I haven’t been to Weird Stuff in years though. They often get bulk electronic surplus and have auctions.
Vandenberg AFB USAF Space and Missile Test Center had some and they were used (according to an email I got this morning) for a project called Splash Detection Radar System which was built by Westinghouse Defense in Baltimore. They apparently had them in at least two locations and possibly more in the Pacific.
I would snoop around Lockheed (right next to Ames) if you know anyone there. They have done a lot of business with Ampex over the years.
Maybe GSA can help out. All government personal property (which this is) ends up at GSA when it’s no longer needed. Good luck.
http://gsaxcess.gov/
If you are looking for ovenized oscillators. GTE [before merger to become Verizon] had a #5EAX telephone switch which used an ovenized master clock on a card running [if memory serves me] at 1mhz. Devilishly tricky and time consuming to adjust but very stable. I believe that some of the #5EAX switches are still in service as smaller offices and may be a source of oscillators for you.
For such a good cause, perhaps a call to Verizon public relations in the Southern Calif. area would be fruitful.
We used to work with similar machines but Im told that our old ones would not have the same format as yours and are therefore usless to you.. sorry.. still tryin:)
What’s being done about the tape itself? You can’t just pull it out of the tins and thread it up.
You know, amazingly enough that is exactly what we do. I am continually amazed that this works as I used to run a TV studio in LA where we could not do that even 20 years ago, but we have had an amazingly small number of tapes that even produce head clogs. We have run some tapes as many as 20-30 times in doing testing. Absolutely amazing to us.
I heard a story, that seems plausable but not sure about it really. It turns out that in 1975 all of the vendors changed the formula for the adhesive that holds the iron particles to the tape back. The new formulation had problems with moisture and over time degraded significantly.
However, the tape before 1975 that did not have this problem was made with a different mixture that included WHALE OIL, I kid you not. I don’t know if this is true but the person that said this (Or I read it one) was an expert on tape.
Interesting…..
Again, thanks to everyone who is finding stuff. For the most part we have found it before but you never know what might help us out that we may have missed. The USO information has been very helpful and we are chasing that one down as soon as I get back to the lab.
Ain’t the internet grand!
🙂
BillN
Thanks but for some reason Ampex had a series 900 as well as the FR-900 and those schematics are for the series 900 product.
Good catch though.
Also, an addendum, across the nation, the old electronics surplus stores are closing, ending an era of access to all kinds of cool and weird stuff. The young kids just don’t build stuff like we did when we were young.
Too bad for us all.