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When I was a freshman at MSU in 1970 I was a member of the MSU amateur radio club. One day the faculty leader recruited me to help a Phd student with his Slow S
by rmason 5y ago
When I was a freshman at MSU in 1970 I was a member of the MSU amateur radio club. One day the faculty leader recruited me to help a Phd student with his Slow Scan TV experiments. The Phd student had a technicians license which didn't have operating privileges on the HF band.
So we operated in tandem and I got to learn all about the then brand new world of SSTV. It was really jerky video but you could send it all over the world. Remember vividly talking to an Egyptian ham who did a live broadcast from the pyramids with camels walking about and it was all live, hot stuff for the time.
The SSTV community was pretty small at the time, no more than a dozen leaders in the U.S. One of them was a fellow by the name of Don Miller from Indiana. Even after all these years I remember the name because there was earlier a rather infamous ham by the name of Don Miller who was an MD, who quit to travel the world putting rare nations on the air.
https://www.amateurradio.com/the-don-miller-enigma/ https://www.amateurradio.com/the-don-miller-enigma/
Shocked to learn a half century later that I was speaking with the greatest archeological thief of all time. Guess both Don Miller's from Indiana were scoundrels.
- jterrys 5y agoAccording to your article, that Don Miller got sentenced to prison for 25 years to life for trying to murder his estranged wife. I'm not so sure its the same person, but maybe the article is wrong?
- drcongo 5y agoThe post says it's not the same person, talks about two Don Millers.
- rmason 5y agoThe first Don Miller from Indiana is the sole reason I remembered the name of the second Don Miller after fifty years.
- jterrys 5y agoAh okay. Now if only the vanity fair article linked in this thread didn't mention this, which got me confused: "Miller got his ham radio license in 1943, founded his own electronics company called Wyman Research, and helped develop slow-scan TV, a technology that transmits still images across high-frequency radio bands. In 1972, he was honored as Amateur of the Year by a ham radio convention and later helped get SSTV aboard the Mir space station, building the system that beamed back images of earth in December 1998." It's just so strange that there's two Don Millers (both whom live in Indiana) involved in the relatively small amateur ham radio scene, one developed SSTV tech, the other traveled the world and tried to kill his wife.
- op00to 5y agoSomething like 90% of amateur radio operators born before 1980 are named Bud. It’s not exactly a diverse crowd.
- onetimemanytime 5y ago>>Shocked to learn a half century later that I was speaking with the greatest archeological thief of all time. Worse. Desecrating hundreds of graves to take remains is the one thing that cannot be explained or forgiven. I see Roman coins or Roman era stuff for sale on some FB groups. Frankly, buying them, even if illegal (some countries have laws making anything historical found state property), is not the end of the world provided you don't destroy them.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoIs there a limit to how many years after one dies that one’s remains or grave can be disturbed? The concept of having ownership of a piece of the universe even after death is puzzling to me.
- snarf21 5y agoWhat is a last will and testament if not that? You dying doesn't give anyone else the right to just claim ownership of your house the second you die. Also, most burial plots include essentially a lease for maintenance. It is probably the cemetery owner who would press charges for theft. There are probably also specific laws on the books that make this illegal.
- uvesten 5y agoIIRC, this is basically a U.S-only phenomenon. In Europe and most other places of the world, there is the understanding that a grave will not last forever. In most parts of Europe, the grave is actually "guaranteed" to still be yours for quite a short time (~40-50 years) before the lease is up. If you want to keep it, the family has to pay to keep it.
- orbital-decay 5y agoAren't certain crypts preserved for centuries, though?
- onetimemanytime 5y ago>>Is there a limit to how many years after one dies that one’s remains or grave can be disturbed? One gazillion years for a scumbag taking the head to his basement and destroying bones. Graves can be moved if determined by the government, of course, but with dignity. That is totally different from some jerk deciding to desecrate graves. In a lot of countries that can send the desecrater to his own grave. If the law doesn't act, family will.
- katmannthree 5y agoSlow scan TV is an analog method for sending still images, not video. The fastest method allows sending a 160x120 greyscale image in about 8 seconds using ~3 kHz bandwidth.
- latchkey 5y agoI know this isn't the same guy and I don't know much about antenna's but it is pretty clear from one of the photos on this page that his house has a couple massive ones... scroll down to the 17 photos section. https://www.indystar.com/story/entertainment/arts/2019/02/27/what-happened-don-miller-artifacts-fbi-found-indiana-farm/2990542002/ https://www.indystar.com/story/entertainment/arts/2019/02/27...