Net 2 and Alpha Tape during the Apollo 11 EVA

recorded at Honeysuckle Creek, 21 July 1969

During Apollo 11, a number of audio recordings were made at Honeysuckle Creek.

Several were made by the Station’s Admin Officer, Bernard Scrivener, at the direction of Honeysuckle’s Station Director, Tom Reid.

Among these was a recording, on 1/4-inch 7-inch diameter audio tape, during the lunar activity phases of Apollo 11.

This recording was of Net 2 (the co-ordination network for all the tracking stations) mixed with Alpha (the main internal Honeysuckle Creek co-ordination loop). It does not include Net 1 (the astronauts and the Capcom).

Mike Dinn writes,

“The Net2 and Alpha recording was made by Bernard Scrivener from the intercom in Tom Reid’s office. If you listen very carefully you can hear a PA announcement in the background at one point.” [Just after the first step, an announcement asks all personnel to move away from the Scan Converter – many are crowding around to see the action on the television monitors.]

Bernard Scrivener in Station Director Tom Reid’s office in December 1968, during Apollo 8. In front of him is the Western Electric 102C speaker connected to the 112A intercom station next to it. On the desk behind the telephone Bernard is using is the reel-to-reel tape recorder which was used to make the Net 2 and Alpha recording below. Photo from Goddard News, January 13 1969. Preserved by Mike Dinn, scanned by Colin Mackellar. 102C speaker ID thanks to Frank Sullens.

By the early 1990s, the 7" tape had been played back at Tidbinbilla and transferred to cassette.

While the wherabouts of the 7" tape is presently unknown, Mike Dinn retained a partial copy on one side of a C-90 Compact Cassette, covering 43 minutes of the EVA, starting 11 minutes before “TV On”. (In 2017, another partial copy was found by Colin Mackellar on a cassette tape preserved by Hamish Lindsay.)

Somewhere in this copying process, the tape was slowed down by a factor of 11%. Time markers common to both the EVA video and the “Net 2 and Alpha tape” (especially the “TV on” announcement and the switch to Parkes) were used to determine the correct time frame of the tape. Happily, once the speed correction was applied, the other time markers (switches between the stations to Houston TV. etc.) fitted to within a second or two.

Note also the references to Parkes from 07:57 onwards. This is because the data from Parkes, as well as Honeysuckle’s ‘wing’ station, Tidbinbilla, was processed at Honeysuckle before being sent to Houston.

Below, you can download the file and also follow the transcript (which starts just before TV On).

Or watch the audio synchronised with the TV here.

In this version of the transcript, all times are relative to the “TV online” announcement, which is at 02:54:00GMT.

Apollo 11 TV section

Honeysuckle Creek Home page