Radio astronomers make waves all over world

Not many people in the world listen to the storms on Jupiter. Bill and Melinda Lord live in Washington County, and listening to Jupiter is one of their pastimes. Bill is the president of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers, and Melinda is the treasurer of the club. They receive countless e-mails from astronomers around the world. The club then purchases radio equipment for these people to explore the final frontier.

Bill and Melinda are both natives of Washington. Bill grew up in the city and Melinda grew up on a house a few miles northeast of town, just an eighth of a mile from the home she and Bill just built. Neither one of them was the slightest bit interested in astronomy when they were young.

Bill remarked, ?Washington was an extremely good school. It?s just that we weren?t drawn to science at the time.?

After graduating from high school, Bill enlisted in the Navy. Upon his return from the Navy, he met and married Melinda. At that point in his life, Bill was most interested in scuba diving. He had become a certified scuba diver at the age of 14. He said Melinda was initially afraid of scuba diving.

?I wasn?t afraid. I just didn?t know how to swim,? said Melinda.

Melinda took swimming lessons and later scuba diving lessons to became a certified diver.

?We trained in muddy places and quarries,? said Melinda. ?After some of that, we realized that there is not much to see scuba diving in Iowa. We wanted to go to warmer, clearer waters.?

The couple moved to Florida, where they both taught scuba diving lessons. They lived there eight or nine years, and then moved to Cleveland, Tenn., where they lived for the next 27 years. The couple moved back to rural Washington one year ago.

The Lords developed an interest in star-gazing about eight years while living in Tennessee.

Melinda said, ?We wanted to look at the stars more. It was nice to look up in space on a dark night. We decided to get a telescope, and it took off from there.?

They did not acquire just any old telescope. One of Bill?s co-workers was an amateur astronomer. He told Bill to purchase the largest aperture telescope he could afford, and that?s exactly what Bill did.

?Melinda was mad at me for two weeks,? said Bill.

The telescope was so large it had to be shipped in separate boxes and took up most of the room in Melinda?s car.

?The mirror is eight inches across,? said Bill. ?There were 30 pounds of counterweights to keep everything balanced.?

Bill and Melinda joined the amateur astronomy club in Chattanooga, 30 miles away. They said that the club?s members talked a lot about astronomy but did very little observation.

?They were armchair astronomers,? said Melinda.

The Lords, on the other hand, were energetic star-spotters and quickly assumed leadership roles in the club. Bill became the vice president the second year he was in the group and was the president the year after that. Melinda became the treasurer. Bill found people with a knowledge of astronomy and invited them to speak at the club. The Lords injected such enthusiasm into the club that its membership grew by leaps and bounds.

The club took its telescopes to large gatherings such as Scouts? meetings and church groups. Melinda said the kids got a kick out of seeing the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.

?Kids love looking at our moon,? said Bill. ?It feels like you can reach out and touch it, especially through our telescopes. I remember this one gal in Tennessee who said she had seen all the pictures form the Hubble Telescope. She looked through one of our smaller telescopes, and I swear she just about wet her pants. She did not realize you could see such definition in the moon and the craters within craters.?

The Lords built an observatory at their home in Tennessee to house a 12-inch diameter telescope. The roof on the observatory is retractable. They plan to build an observatory at their new home on Redwood Avenue next year.

One of the guest speakers at the Chattanooga club gave a presentation about radio astronomy. That piqued the Lords? interest, and before long they had acquired their own radio receiver called a ?Jove Receiver.? Their Jove Receiver allowed them to listen to the crackling of the sun during the day and the storms on Jupiter at night.

Bill and Melinda later became involved in an international club known as the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA). They moved up the ranks in that organization just as quickly as in the Chattanooga club. Bill is in his second year as the president of the group and Melinda is in her fourth year as the treasurer.

SARA helps junior high, high school and college students get their foot in the astronomical door by purchasing radio receivers for them.

?A lot of people don?t realize what they can do with just a few things,? said Bill.

Believe it or not, a Chrysler radio doubles as a meteor detector. When meteors fall to earth, they ionize the planet?s ionosphere. This allows FM radio waves to bounce off the ionosphere and be heard 600 to 800 miles away, if only for a few seconds.

Melinda said she and Bill have received correspondence even from people in Ethiopia.

?They eat up science over there,? said Melinda. ?You ask the young kids what they want to be when they grow up, and they say a scientist, an astronaut or another lofty goal.?