Super 8 movies of the TV

Ed von Renouard’s Super 8 movies
of the Apollo 11 EVA
as seen at Honeysuckle Creek

Monday 21st July 1969 (Australian time)

Ed von Renouard was (by a fraction of a second) one of the first people to see the television pictures coming down from Apollo 11.

As Honeysuckle Creek’s Video Tech, Ed’s responsibility was to operate the Slow Scan console which received the 10 frames per second / 320 line picture from Apollo 11. He also operated the Scan Converter, which converted the lunar TV to US TV standards of 30fps and 525 lines.

The Apollo 11 Moonwalk as seen at Honeysuckle Creek – unique footage.

Honeysuckle Creek’s Video Tech, Ed used his Super 8 movie camera to record the activity at the tracking station – as well as television from the Moon (in real time and also from telemetry tapes immediately afterwards).

Direct link to the video.

Ed von Renouard at the Honeysuckle Creek video console during the Apollo 11 Moonwalk.

This picture was assembled from a right to left pan of Ed’s Super 8 movie camera. This segment was shot, it seems, after Armstrong and Aldrin had re-entered the Lunar Module. After the EVA ended, live TV continued for another 2 hours and 48 minutes.

Click here for a key to the above photo.

Ed von Renouard at the Honeysuckle Creek video console.

It was through this console that the television picture of Neil Armstrong’s ‘first step’ was seen.

The high resolution slow-scan TV monitor is at the top of the slow-scan TV processing rack to the left of Ed.

This monitor could display the ‘standard’ slow scan picture of 10 frames per second at 320 lines per frame or a high resolution mode of 0.625 frames per second at 1280 lines per frame.

In practice, only the lower resolution video of 320 lines was transmitted back to Earth.

Directly above Ed’s head (clearly visible in the large version of the photo) is the toggle switch used to invert to television for the beginning of the broadcast when the camera was mounted upside-down in the MESA on the side of the descent stage of the Lunar Module.

This photo was taken during the Apollo 12 mission. Photo supplied by Hamish Lindsay. Large, Larger.

In addition to taking 35mm photos of the monitors at Honeysuckle during the EVA, he also took some footage with his Super 8 movie camera. He did this for his own souvenir of the event, however Ed’s re-discovered (in 2005) footage is some of the best of the TV of the Moonwalk.

Ed von Renouard with his Super 8 movie camera.

Photo taken during a later Apollo mission. Scan: Ed von Renouard.

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