Sputnik-1 Anniversary and tech info!

[Burns FISHER]

Yesterday, October 4, was the 61st anniversary of the launch of the first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik 1.  Although I was alive at the time, and remember talking about it and/or seeing it, I did not LISTEN to it so I have never known much about the transmissions.  I did find some info in Wikipedia, and now a very interesting article which includes a circuit diagram: ftp://ftp.radio.ru/pub/2013/04/55.pdf  The text is in Russian, but I’ll include a rough machine translation done by Julian M0NUX.

The quick summary is that the Soviets published a lot of information well ahead of the launch, include the frequencies (20 and 40MHz approximately).  The power was 1Watt, and the transmitter had 3 tubes; looks like a push/pull PA and a 1-tube oscillator.

[Burns FISHER]

Here is a file with the translation of that PDF.

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[Burns FISHER]

Turns out these tubes are called “rod tubes”.  There is a rod within them that all the parts–grid, cathode, filament, plate–are mounted on so they can withstand the launch acceleration!

 

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