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Jarrah: Firstly, it’s not simply a matter of pointing your dish and listening in.
Listening in requires both your dish to be precisely aimed and tuned to the correct frequency.
In my original video, I pointed out that the Soviets don’t use the 2GHz band used by
Apollo, and the FCC doesn’t allocate ham operators this frequency.
Going by these regulations, I pointed out that hams could not possibly have picked up
Apollo’s signals.
Going by THESE regulations hams could not possibly have picked up Apollo’s signals?
[Chuckles]
If Jarrah only understood what these regulations really mean.
Important!
FCC regulations prohibit DISCLOSURE of the content of communications not intended for
the public.
Thus, it is illegal to INFORM the press or any other third party of the content of any
information received directly from the Apollo communications link.
These regulations, which Jarrah conveniently misinterprets, did not prevent anyone from
picking up Apollo’s signals.
They simply prohibited amateur radio operators within the US from disclosing “content”
to the press and third parties that is NOT INTENDED FOR THE PUBLIC.
That last part is very important.
Similar FCC regulations apply to the use of police scanners in the US.
As long as you don’t get caught telling the press or other third parties WHAT you hear,
you can listen all you want in the privacy of your own home.
As an example, let’s say you hear on your police scanner that a well-known conspiracist
was arrested.
According to FCC regulations, you are not permitted to call and inform your local TV
station what you heard about the incident, especially for monetary gain.
Regardless of the crime, our conspiracist is due a fair trial.
And just telling your friends and neighbors what you heard on your police scanner could
be considered interfering with due process of the law.
That’s the intent of this FCC regulation, which is only enforceable within the borders
of the US and her territories.
The regulating authorities in other countries may have different rules.
And no matter where they’re from, hams could freely write to the first party, in this case
NASA, telling them what they heard and when.
And in exchange they might receive a QSL card or in Paul Wilson’s special case, an autographed
photo of the astronauts.
Legal aspects aside, there are a couple of other things I find interesting about this
FCC regulation, which Jarrah totally ignores.
Most importantly, if Jarrah is correct and it was impossible for amateur radio operators
to tune-in to Apollo’s transmissions, then why would the FCC waste their breath issuing
such a rule?
Why tell hams not to do something they were not capable of doing to begin with?
That doesn’t make sense does it?
The mere fact that the FCC issued this regulation should be proof enough that not only did the
FCC believe that amateur radio jocks in the US COULD tune-in to Apollo, but that they
fully expected a few of these meddlesome hams WOULD tune-in to Apollo.
It’s also important to note that there is no penalty mentioned in this regulation.
Penalties would depend upon the circumstances surrounding the violation and the amateur’s
classification.
Worst case, the FCC might yank the amateur radio operator’s license.
Jarrah: Just to give a quick recap, Paul Wilson claims to have picked up signals from Apollos
10, 12, 14, and 15, when they were in lunar orbit, plus a few hours of signals during
the Apollo 15’s return voyage.
He also claims to have picked up Apollo 16, just before it entered lunar orbit and while
it was in lunar orbit.
Richard Knadle claims he picked up Apollo 15 in lunar orbit and some of the signals
broadcast on the ride home.
Sven Grahn claims he picked up Apollo 17 during it’s various passes over his head, then
for reasons unknown, stopped tracking the signals and resumed only when the craft was
in lunar orbit.
Further, it wasn’t until Apollo 15 that Wilson actually received voice signals.
And the FCC declared it illegal for hams to inform the world of any communications not
intended for public view.
For reasons unknown?
If Jarrah had taken the time to actually read Sven’s testimonial, he would know that while
Apollo 17 was in earth orbit, Sven listened to their transmissions on VHF.
Once Apollo 17 left earth orbit, the astronauts switched to their S-band transmitter, making
it impossible to pick up their signal on a VHF receiver.
It would be like trying to pick up an AM station on an FM radio.
Sven and his buddies Richard Flagg and Wes Greenman then had to wait until the spacecraft
was near the moon to locate it again.
And Jarrah’s opinion on hams not being able to disclose what they heard on Apollo’s
transmissions is a straw man.
Since NASA sent practically all TV and voice communications they received directly to the
media on a five second delay, that pretty well destroys Jarrah’s argument.
Once Apollo’s transmissions were aired on TV or radio they became public record.
That sounds like “intent” for public viewing to me.
Jarrah: In a nut shell, the average ham is typically not allocated the frequency band
used by Apollo.
And it seems that none of the hams who found a way to tune their dishes to Apollo’s signal
can attest to having tracked these vehicles all the way to the moon and back.
Given that these guys tracked very little data, if any.
It’s possible that these signals they received were from unmanned probes, respectively on
the moon and in lunar orbit, which either broadcasted prerecorded signals or relayed
transmissions that were beamed to them from earth orbit.
And given that no one was tracking these probes all the way to the moon, who would know if
they were already up there in advance?
And let’s not forget, with the FCC policing what the hams can and cannot disclose to the public,
the truth behind Apollo is as good as buried.
Just how many hams do you suppose have evidence of a hoax and are keeping silent over fear
of prosecution?
How many hams do you suppose have evidence of a hoax and are keeping silent for fear
of prosecution?
I have no idea what that means.
It’s reminiscent of Jarrah’s claim that NASA had telemetry that proved Luna 1 didn’t exist.
As misguided as his question is, it does make a fitting end statement to Jarrah’s barrage
of total nonsense.
As for burying the truth behind Apollo, I think Jarrah is confused as to what’s actually
in that grave.
It only takes one exception to disqualify a claim.
Jarrah lists three exceptions - three amateur radio operators who managed to “tune their
dishes,” as he says, to Apollo.
And he offers no real evidence to suggest they weren’t telling the truth.
Jarrah also leaves out the story about Larry Baysinger who picked up and recorded VHF transmissions
during the Apollo 11 EVA.
There is an article about Larry on the Otter Creek-South Harrison Observatory website.
A link is in the sidebar to this video.
The site even has recordings that Larry made - recordings of Aldrin and Armstrong's voices
uninterrupted by any ground-chatter from CapCom, and missing the Quindar tones heard during
the TV broadcasts.
Are Baysinger’s recordings illegal according to FCC regulations?
No, because everything he recorded was played over the TV and radio five seconds later and
became public record, thus nullifying the FCC regulations.
Jarrah’s other claim, insisting that independent observations of Apollo’s transmissions are
not valid unless those observers tracked Apollo all the way to the moon and back, is ridiculous.
If you leave the earth and arrive at the moon two days later, then you got there somehow.
Right?
His claim that NASA used unmanned probes is just that - a claim.
Should, would, could, don’t prove anything; they don’t even suggest reasonable doubt.
We’ll dive deeper into that claim later when we get back to critiquing Jarrah’s
Exhibit D series.
Jarrah: How can radio hams be regarded as independent verification, when the FCC restricts
what little of their data they can and cannot release to the public?
Not mentioning this in his video is another fallacy of omission by Phil Webb.
Not discussing Jarrah’s misconceptions regarding amateur radio operators in a video about Parkes
observatory is not a fallacy of omission.
It’s called “staying on subject.”
The fact that Jarrah had to go off the main subject and spend half of his four part video
series criticizing a teaser sentence where I mention hams and Soviets in my Parkes video
shows just how little he has to say about the main subject of any of my videos.
In two months time, he hasn’t even attempted to defend his position on any of the errors
he made in the moon rock portion of his [Moonfaker] Exhibit D series, and the best he can come
up with to defend his misconceptions on LLR is to say that I accused him of quote-mining
the MythBusters, which even if I did would be totally irrelevant.
And his preemptive strike on the telecommunications portion of my series, attacking an unlisted,
draft version of my Parkes video just days after he had stumbled upon it, presumed that
I should have been aware that he had changed his mind and later mentioned in subsequent
videos that Goldstone was in a position to “allegedly” receive signals from Apollo 11.
If that’s the best he has to offer, I can’t wait to get started on systematically debunking
his other “scientific” videos.
This might actually be fun.
[Chuckles]
Ciao moon hoax conspirators, wherever you are.