I am quite interested in the history of radio astronomy and especially amateur radio astronomy. Recently, in a search for an old article on a particular piece of ham radio equipment that I built many years ago, I purchased a stack of Popular Electronics and Electronics Illustrated magazines from the 60s. I grew up reading these magazines, and I am amazed by how I still recognize the articles and illustrations in them. I found my transmitter article, but I was also pleasantly surprised to also find two articles related to amateur radio astronomy. Though neither article is a "construction article" they each had something significant to say in regards to the thin history of amateur radio astronomy. I am presenting these articles here in pdf format. I assume the copyright is expired. If anyone knows otherwise please let me know and I will withdraw them or attempt to get permission to display them
The January 1966 Popular Electronics article was titled Radio Astronomy: Surveying the Unquiet Universe. Note on the cover (below) that it said Radio Astronomy: Start a New Hobby. One particularly notable thing about the article is the mention of the amateur discovery of solar emissions by an amateur named Dennis Heightman. According to the article Mr. Heightman had correlated solar emissions with sunspots and had reported prior to the often quoted discovery by J. S. Hey, a physicist. I would be interested in finding out more about this.
Note there is an error in the caption under the interferometer diagram on page 41. The caption says the "A small source shows closer spaced lobes than a large one." This isn't true. In a simple drift scan interferometer the lobe spacing is a function of antenna spacing (in wavelengths) and declination of the source . If a source has a diameter much larger than the angular resolution of the interferometer, the source will be "resolved" and will not produce a lobe pattern. Perhaps this is what the author meant. (There are a few things that have "changed" in the science of radio astronomy since the time of these articles, so read them with hindsight in mind.)
The second article I found was in July 1963 Electronics Illustrated and was titled Telescope Without a Lens. The two page article is about a 60 MHz radiotelescope made by high school students and teacher James Snyder at Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington, New York. It is all very brief, but there are several interesting photos and block diagram of there telescope.