Sputnik Trackers, the St. Joe's High School Radio Club live on TV in 1957

---W8KTZ---Cleveland, Ohio--- Ham Radio Club Memories from the 50's, 60's, and into the 70's

St. Joe's High School Radio Club

The Sputnik Gang tells their story on the WEWS TV-5 Program:

"Inside The Catholic Schools"
Sunday, December 1, 1957 -- 1:45-2:00 pm
-- the "literal 15-minutes of fame"! --

Another title for this might be "Bad Pictures, Good memories!" By today's standards, television was still in the dark ages. Most families had only one television set, and everything, including the equipment at the TV stations, was still limited to vacuum-tube technology. These images, which were photographed off a home TV in 1957, have been digitally reprocessed, and in many ways appear better here than those actually viewed back then!

-- Our thanks to WEWS-TV5, "First in Cleveland" --for allowing us to display these pictures.

Bob Leskovec
(club president)
starts the show with
a brief summary of the
Sputnik tracking adventure.

Joe Marsey talks about
recording the Sputnik "beeps"
while playing them back from the
Concertone to display on the oscilloscope.

(At this point during the presentation, WEWS cuts to a re-enactment, filmed on location at the school radio club, showing the students working with the equipment, performing the tracking, and recording the data. Then the live show resumed with Mike and the students explaining the details.)

Moderator Mike Stimac
explains that the boys started
plotting the orbits on an earth globe.

Dave Mazi shows how
the paper strips allowed
them to start predicting the
next pass of the Sputnik satellite.

Dennis Skala explains the Orbitometer,
a circular slide rule, which the boys
devised to predict orbits.

Mike Stimac and Ed Miller explain
how the orbit prediction resulted in
determining exactly when the radio
signals would begin to be heard again.

Ed Miller demonstrates how the radio
signals could actually be heard
before the satellite could be seen
coming over the horizon.

The group sits for the final
wide shot as the program ends.

All photos on this page by John J. Leskovec

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