Brian Webb and the SoCal Astronomy Group and Associated Ham Radio Nets are reporting that Vandenburg AFB has announced to the public another Minute Man II strategic missile is scheduled for launch on (Oct 14) Monday evening. The launch window will be between 7PM and 11 PM Pacific Time. Our best guess is the launch will be close to 7PM.
While I won't bore you with all the impressive technical details, the missile will launch an unarmed warhead and decoys to somewhere in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific to meet up with another missile over 4800 miles away for another defense test. The launch has the potential of being another impressive sight if it is launched before 7:20 PM (around sunset,) and it will be backlit by the setting sun and will be visible to the entire Southern California area and as far South as Mexico with a large and impressive plume.
So get your cameras ready. If you need some help I suggest you check out Brian's website for how-to notes. I will be sitting on the hilltop at Puddingstone with two cameras and the XL-1 loaded for bear.
Ham Operators are welcome to participate in the Vandenburg Launch Nets Monday night following the launch at 6:30 PM Pacific Time. Primary Repeater is WB6OBB Santa Barbara at 147.000, 224.900, and 449.300 MHz. Secondary launch nets will be held on the 147.090 MHz Catalina Island repeater and on 3.815 MHz, LSB. The Catalina repeater covers areas to the south that the Santa Barbara repeater cannot. The Condor linked system may have launch related nets as well.
For those with a shortwave radio, you can listen to the net at 3.815 MHz on their shortwave radios.
Kevin Kelly: "As Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, has pointed out, digitizing films is expensive. 'Who is going to digitize these public domain movies?' he asks. I have an answer: movie buffs." [Scripting News]
Dave, Valenti's lying through his teeth. Nearly every movie in the past 10-15 years had a digital scan or been digitized into a nonlinear editor. How do you think they got them to resize to fit your televison set? Those files can be accessed from the production or film companies archives. Every editor worth their salt has copies or backups of those files. Reloading them if you have to digitize from original stock takes some time, but it's not nearly as big a deal as Jack's trying to make it. He's blowing smoke. Trust me on that fact Boopsie! ;-)
The inevitable: we will all eventually have the vast majority of books, movies, and music ever produced on our hard-drives. How it gets there is the only question left. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
Patience Grasshopper. I all ready know how to do it, how to store it and how to access it. It's just getting paid so that I can pay my bills that's the major problem. Any questions?
SoCal Minute Man Launch or What Goes Up
