Re: [Rollei] Location

[Don Williams <dwilli10 >]

At 09:53 PM 4/4/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>Don
>
>You were skin diving in a dry lake?
>
>Jerry

Jerry,

Even I know that's not practical, it's too shallow to be any fun. ;-)

(Actually the water depth is zero most of the time, goes up to 1-3 inches 
in places after a rain)

I was making absolute flux measurements on a mile-long radio-telescope 
array on Clark dry lake.  I was work in the 10 meter frequency range and 
measured 4 relatively strong radio sources.  Since they were rather evenly 
spaced in time I had to get up a couple of times in the middle of the 
night.  Incredibly clear air, lots of stars, and an absolute inability to 
see your flashlight beam, even when pointed to the ground.  I had to reset 
delay lines to change the declination of the array to catch each source.

At that time it belonged to the Astronautics Scientific Research Lab, later 
transferred to Univ. of Maryland.  I think it's de-commissioned now, but I 
did communicate with the guy who designed it recently.  He splits his time 
between his own radio telescope in Tasmania (ask Graeme Oxley about that, 
he's seen that one), and the other half of the year working for the 
government in the DC area, as does his wife.  That thesis project, and the 
professor, are what resulted in my invitation to work in The Netherlands.

Found a lot of WW II munitions over the months that I went out there.


Don Williams
La Jolla, CA

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