the white house has an official flickr photo stream

interesting - and maybe there will be some cold war
comms in some photos....

doug


Begin forwarded message:

> From: "T.bias" <me@...>
> Date: November 28, 2009 5:12:30 PM EST
> To: doug humphrey <doug@...>
> Subject: Via the official WH Flickr stream
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4139605630/
>
> I had no idea that photo was taken by the official photographer and
> approved for Flickr today.  …interesting…
>
> --
> T.bias
>
> www.tbias.com
> Eclectic media production.
>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>
> Just in case anyone's interested in an immersive experience, the
> Conet Project attempted to compile recordings of these things a few
> years ago.  They put together a 4-CD set you can read about here:
>
> http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm
>
> Apparently, they decided to release the whole thing to the public
> domain, so you can download it all (plus the booklet) from a bunch
> of places online, such as here:
>
> http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=239
>
> Enjoy until getting creeped out,
>
> Gabriel Lubell

this CD is GREAT for "music on hold" function....
or the DEVO easy listening CD (we did that too)
but the conet CD was a real hit - we had people
asking to be put back on hold sometimes.....

doug




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Bill-
There is a large self-supporting tower with numerous antennae, appearing to be
UHF as well as lo-band VHF TV...some horizontally polarized, the rest vertically
polarized.  That tower sits on the southern end of Truman Annex at Key West NAS.
I've seen this beast every time we vacation at Key West, and even though I've
asked - openly - about it and whether it simply monitors Cuban TV, I can't get a
word from anyone.


Tom Scanlan



-----Original Message-----
From: Box SisteenHundred <box1600@...>
To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, Nov 25, 2009 7:31 am
Subject: RE: [coldwarcomms] Remember Numbers stations






Remember...?

I monitor the Cubans nightly.

Bill  KA8VIT

> To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
> From: bbowers@...
> Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:51:58 -0600
> Subject: [coldwarcomms] Remember Numbers stations
>
> Remember the old numbers stations?
>


__________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]









[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Here's a link to the booklet:
http://irdial.hyperreal.org/www/conet_project_booklet.pdf


At 03:22 AM 11/26/2009, you wrote:
>
>
>Just in case anyone's interested in an immersive
>experience, the Conet Project attempted to
>compile recordings of these things a few years
>ago. They put together a 4-CD set you can read about here:
>
><http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm>http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm
>
>Apparently, they decided to release the whole
>thing to the public domain, so you can download
>it all (plus the booklet) from a bunch of places online, such as here:
>
><http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=239>http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=239
>
>Enjoy until getting creeped out,
>
>Gabriel Lubell
>
>--- In
><mailto:coldwarcomms%40yahoogroups.com>coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com,
>"paul125a" <paul125a@...> wrote:
> >
> > Here's a recording I made in Washington DC
> last May, on a cheap Eton analog radio; no external antenna.
> >
> >
>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_9NwEEeRdU>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_9Nw\
EEeRdU
> >
> > This may have been intended for the husband
> and wife spy tem that was living in a fancy
> apartment in Noirthwest DC, who were busted a
> few weeks after I heard this transmission.
> >
> > --- In
> <mailto:coldwarcomms%40yahoogroups.com>coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com,
> Box SisteenHundred <box1600@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Remember...?
> > >
> > > I monitor the Cubans nightly.
> > >
> > > Bill KA8VIT
> > >
> > >
> > > > To: <mailto:coldwarcomms%40yahoogroups.com>coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
> > > > From: bbowers@
> > > > Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:51:58 -0600
> > > > Subject: [coldwarcomms] Remember Numbers stations
> > > >
> > > > Remember the old numbers stations?
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________________
> > > Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
> > >
>
<http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/>http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/17\
7141664/direct/01/
> > > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
> > >
> > >
> > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> > >
> >
>
>

---------------------------------------------------------------
    Mike Cowen      Practice random acts of kindness
                                and selfless acts of beauty.
   mcowen@...            -Anonymous



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Just in case anyone's interested in an immersive experience, the Conet Project
attempted to compile recordings of these things a few years ago.  They put
together a 4-CD set you can read about here:

http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm

Apparently, they decided to release the whole thing to the public domain, so you
can download it all (plus the booklet) from a bunch of places online, such as
here:

http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=239

Enjoy until getting creeped out,

Gabriel Lubell



--- In coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com, "paul125a" <paul125a@...> wrote:
>
> Here's a recording I made in Washington DC last May, on a cheap Eton analog
radio; no external antenna.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_9NwEEeRdU
>
> This may have been intended for the husband and wife spy tem that was living
in a fancy apartment in Noirthwest DC, who were busted a few weeks after I heard
this transmission.
>
> --- In coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com, Box SisteenHundred <box1600@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Remember...?
> >
> > I monitor the Cubans nightly.
> >
> > Bill  KA8VIT
> >
> >
> > > To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
> > > From: bbowers@
> > > Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:51:58 -0600
> > > Subject: [coldwarcomms] Remember Numbers stations
> > >
> > > Remember the old numbers stations?
> > >
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
> > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
> > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>

Here's a recording I made in Washington DC last May, on a cheap Eton analog
radio; no external antenna.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_9NwEEeRdU

This may have been intended for the husband and wife spy tem that was living in
a fancy apartment in Noirthwest DC, who were busted a few weeks after I heard
this transmission.

--- In coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com, Box SisteenHundred <box1600@...> wrote:
>
>
> Remember...?
>
> I monitor the Cubans nightly.
>
> Bill  KA8VIT
>
>
> > To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
> > From: bbowers@...
> > Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:51:58 -0600
> > Subject: [coldwarcomms] Remember Numbers stations
> >
> > Remember the old numbers stations?
> >
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
> http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
> http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Remember...?

I monitor the Cubans nightly.

Bill  KA8VIT


> To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
> From: bbowers@...
> Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:51:58 -0600
> Subject: [coldwarcomms] Remember Numbers stations
>
> Remember the old numbers stations?
>


_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

"Blake Bowers" <bbowers@...> wrote:
> Remember the old numbers stations?

Who could forget the Lincolnshire Poacher etc.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nERNpV7bMQ>

Remember the old numbers stations?


Don't take your organs to heaven,
heaven knows we need them down here!
Be an organ donor, sign your donor card today.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Lakaytis" <chuck@...>
To: <broadcast@...>
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [BC] Federal Transmitter


> In the early sixties I took care of a bunch of transmitters, courtesy of
> the US Army.  Amongst all the Collins, Western Electric, and TMS's were
> a row of Federal CW 10 kw transmitters.  They pounded out five letter
> code groups day after day.  They were ASA (Army Security Agency) circuits.
>
> Beautiful rigs with brass tuning wheels (not knobs) and water cooled.
> Nice pulsating mercury vapor rectifiers.
>
> Cooling was actually via grain alcohol to the outside radiators.  We had
> the occasional leak and one exciting fire, but in the main they
> faithfully chugged along.
>
> We received several fifty gallon barrels of coolant every year and
> hardly use more then a barrel.
>
> So cooks provided the steaks, local help provided the chickens and
> vegtables, and we provided the booze.  Mixes with mess hall grape juice,
> we drank the infamous "Federal Telegraph Cocktails" also known as stump
> juice.  What parties....what hangovers.
>
> I took them out of service in 1962.....sigh...no more grain alcohol.
>>
>> harold stanton wrote:
>>
>>>   Found a nearly new Collins 820 in WV (that was along side one of
>>> the most beautiful Federals I've ever seen).
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Chuck Lakaytis
> Director of Engineering, Alaska Public Broadcasting
> 135 Cordova Street, Anchorage, AK 99501
> office   907-277-6300
>
>
>
>
> ~_____________________________________________________________~
> The BROADCAST [BC] list is sponsored by www.bwbroadcast.com
> Retire your analog box, 4 band DSP audio processing from $1800.
> www.audio-processor.com Tel: 1-866-376-1612 info@...

Join Dustin Bruce on Yahoo! Messenger.

Come chat with me, share files and more.

Stay in the loop with all your friends.
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--
this email was sent to you by an automated system - please do not reply directly



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com, Sam Etler <etler@...> wrote:
>
> The gentleman from the Air Force who contacted me about SS-4 BSPs prompted
> me to dig out some older documents that might be of historical interest to
> some.
>
> 993.301.01, SC2 Selective Control System, Issue 1, Aug. 1957
>
> http://etler.com/docs/BSP/993.301.01.pdf
>
> 993.402.01, Common User Group Equipment - Air-Ground Voice
> Communications System - Private Service Systems, Issue 1, Feb. 1958
> (Not entirely clear from the title unless you're familiar with it, this
> describes the SAGE air-ground voice communications system.)
>
> http://etler.com/docs/BSP/993.402.01.pdf
>
> 993.409.01, General Description of SS1 Selective Signaling Systems, Issue
> 1, Oct. 15, 1959
> (This one is interesting. It eventually became 982-325-100 but this
> version is done on a typewriter with very neat but clearly hand drawn
> schematics.  Guess they wanted to get the BSP out there quickly?)
>
> http://etler.com/docs/BSP/993.409.01.pdf
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Oh, anyone know if there was an SC1 Selective Control System?  Can't find
> any reference to either in the quick scan of the history books I just
> made.
>
The JCSAN/COPAN networks used SC-2 in the early 1960's I believe, but SC-1,if it
was ever deployed, may have been on these networks originally.

One could hear the series of beeps on the circuit as a conference was shutting
down.

The gentleman from the Air Force who contacted me about SS-4 BSPs prompted
me to dig out some older documents that might be of historical interest to
some.

993.301.01, SC2 Selective Control System, Issue 1, Aug. 1957

http://etler.com/docs/BSP/993.301.01.pdf

993.402.01, Common User Group Equipment - Air-Ground Voice
Communications System - Private Service Systems, Issue 1, Feb. 1958
(Not entirely clear from the title unless you're familiar with it, this
describes the SAGE air-ground voice communications system.)

http://etler.com/docs/BSP/993.402.01.pdf

993.409.01, General Description of SS1 Selective Signaling Systems, Issue
1, Oct. 15, 1959
(This one is interesting. It eventually became 982-325-100 but this
version is done on a typewriter with very neat but clearly hand drawn
schematics.  Guess they wanted to get the BSP out there quickly?)

http://etler.com/docs/BSP/993.409.01.pdf

Enjoy!

Oh, anyone know if there was an SC1 Selective Control System?  Can't find
any reference to either in the quick scan of the history books I just
made.

sam

---
The trouble with the world is that it's always one drink behind.
 	 -- Humphrey Bogart

Those "green screens" on the BMEWS -- they remind me (style-wise, I have never
seen one first-hand) of the old Bunker-Ramo CRTs we had at another DoD agency
that I never worked for.  :-)  God, I hope they aren't still running RSX-11 or
VMS....

Still BALing after all these years (but thankfully never experienced BLISS or
ADA!)

john

--- In coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com, John Young <jya@...> wrote:
>
> http://www.af.mil/photos/media_search.asp?q=greenland&page=2
>

http://www.af.mil/photos/media_search.asp?q=greenland&page=2

Thanks

Robin K Fry
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: hooligan@...
   To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 5:02 PM
   Subject: Re: [coldwarcomms] Re: The Thule B-52 Crash of 1968



   http://www.cowtown.net/proweb/b36_mishaps.htm

   -----Original Message-----
   From: Robin K Fry <rfry.7@...>
   To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Mon, Nov 16, 2009 8:34 am
   Subject: Re: [coldwarcomms] Re: The Thule B-52 Crash of 1968

   As a Canadian Livine In British Columbia, I have always been interested in the
1940s crash of a B-36 in the northern part in B,C. It has been documented in a
Discovery channel program called "Lost Nuke". Any comments on this crash vs the
Thule crash?

   Robin K Fry



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Dave,

    As a resident and neighbor of yours in Lincoln since 1971 I can confirm the
details of your description of the Nike facilities in Lincoln and Wayland. The
radar site was located on a small hill on the Drumlin Farm property on Rt. 117.
The launcher was on the Wayland -Lincoln line on Farrar Rd. The radar site is
long gone, the two launcher site existed intact until a few years ago when the
town of Wayland removed the launchers and magazines and built an affordable
housing project. The only remnant is some government housing across the
street on an appropriately named street, "Launcher Way".

    There were nuclear warheads there. When the site was being closed down
in the late 70's the police department was notified that there would be
helicopter
activity related to the removal of the warheads. After the missiles were removed
the Mass National Guard had a matainance unit there for years. I was given a
tour of one of the magazines and saw a painted designation on the wall for a
"W-31". The NG was tasked for the first few years with exercising the machinery
to raise and lower the missiles from the magazine.

Tom M



-----Original Message-----
From: David I. Emery <die@...>
To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, Nov 18, 2009 10:04 pm
Subject: Re: [coldwarcomms] pictures




On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 01:19:18PM -0800, Jason Bourne wrote:

> If I'm not mistaken, there was also a Nike-Hercules radar system in
> the vicinity of Waltham as part of the regional air defense system for
> MA during the cold war.

As someone who is currently sitting in my living room in the
next town west of Waltham (Weston) as I type this... and who grew up in
the area...

Waltham itself did not have any Nike stuff that I remember...
there was a Nike battery directly to the west of Waltham in Lincoln Mass
and the adjacent town Wayland Mass with the radars for it on a hill in
Lincoln that is now a well known nature preserve called Drumlin Farm.
In later years of the system the Wayland launcher site did apparently
have nuclear warheads at one point I believe.

A major search radar site for the system and further battery
control radar was located to the south of Lincoln/Wayland/Weston on a
hill in Needham Mass, along with additional launchers nearby. Other
hills around Boston had other associated radars serving additional
launchers near them as well.

I remember tours of the Nike sites were given to scouts and
school kids... and the weed encrusted remains of the Wayland launcher
site existed into the post millennium era - the hilltop radar sites
having long since been removed - though I believe some of the buildings
at the Needham radar site have been used as a residence/school for
disabled children and were not entirely torn down.

At one point in the late 60s or early 70s a major hill
(Prospect Hill) in Waltham grew a quite large precision Ku band dish
(probably 40-60 feet or more) that was prominently visible from the
famous Route 128 (now I95). This was used by AFCRL in early
feasibility studies of use of Ku and higher frequencies in satcom... and
during this era there were a number of small unmanned weather stations
along the path of the beam from the dish toward the test satellite to
measure local weather conditions (such as rainfall and fog) and how they
impacted propagation. This dish was torn down around 2000 or so and the
mount and associated building has been reused since as an antenna
platform for various two way radio system antennas including some local
ham repeaters.

Another hill in Waltham (Bear Hill) on the other side of I95/128
had one of the very first TD-2 telephone microwave relay sites on it, on
the path between Boston and NY that was the first test of a practical
telco microwave radio system. The Waltham site was the first hop out of
Boston toward NY... and used square delay lens antennas on a 3 story
concrete building rooftop rather than Hogg horns on the later tall 300
foot traditional AT&T microwave towers. A few years after that route
was established in the late 1940s a non AT&T standard much thinner tower
was put up next to the TD-2 building for a link north to Portland Maine
feed by round dish antennas rather than horns. That tower was torn
down at the time most microwave was shut down in the very late 80s...
and eventually replaced in the very early 90s by a distinctive tall oil
derrick tower - unlike most other AT&T towers - that was apparently used
in some kind of experimental 6 GHz cellular system propagation studies
in the very early 90s and has mostly been used since as a cell site
tower with a smattering of other radio systems on it.

The same hill, Bear Hill, also grew towers for a MCI microwave
path out of Boston and various other microwave system and still has
multiple towers and quite a few active antennas and links on it -
including some used for SNG trucks in the west of Boston area for links
back to their studios and of course the paging transmitters for the
area... the top of the hill has a good view overlooking Boston to the
east so it is a natural radio site.

Nearby Wayland also had, for many years, a large Raytheon lab
that developed radar for the Navy, and there were many experimental and
test radars on the roof and grounds of the facility over the years. As
a kid growing up in Wayland I was aware (probably more than most other
folks) of the RF from the radar testing... it was sufficient from time
to time to light up fluorescent tubes in the middle school building I
attended classes in on the side of the building facing the radars across
the Sudbury river marshes and to cause all kinds of RFI with A/V
equipment in school classrooms. That Raytheon facility has long since
closed and is in the process of being torn down in the next year or so.


--
Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die@... DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in
celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

A gentleman from the United States Air Force contacted me today asking if
I have a copy of 982-329-100 which is the descriptive BSP for the SS-4
Selective Signaling System.  Unfortunately I don't.  Anyone out there have
a copy they'd like to share?

Can't say I've ever assisted the military with anything but it would be
nice to be able to help.

Thanks!

sam

---
The trouble with the world is that it's always one drink behind.
  	 -- Humphrey Bogart

http://www.cowtown.net/proweb/b36_mishaps.htm


-----Original Message-----
From: Robin K Fry <rfry.7@...>
To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, Nov 16, 2009 8:34 am
Subject: Re: [coldwarcomms] Re: The Thule B-52 Crash of 1968





     As a Canadian Livine In British Columbia,  I have always been interested in
the 1940s crash of a B-36 in the northern part in B,C. It has been documented in
a Discovery channel program called "Lost Nuke".  Any comments on this crash vs
the Thule crash?

Robin K Fry

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]









[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

yahoo has lost most of the US AT&T maps from the files section.

Also, I have some unresolvable issues about the Ft Wayne area, I have a path out
of FT Wayne Radio that is not on the map and two towers near here that are not
on 1970 edition.

Steve

For the gentleman who asked, I am unable to pull N3UMs address from the
microwave reflector, but you are welcome to join at

www.wa1mba.org/reflect.htm

Or you could look up things at QRZ.com or any other call sign locator.

Steve

Sorry, I am having problems with Acme Mapper.  For some reason I cannot purge
old defaults from my Acme browser.  To see the horns on the AT&T Building in
Albuquerque, bring up the underlined URL, and in 'find' type in Albuquerque NM. 
Then zoom in on the corner of 3rd & Copper.  You should clearly see the horns,
which are pointed SOUTH, NORTHWEST and NORTHEAST.


Sorry about the previous post - my mistakes.  Would appreciate any info on these
horns....they appear to have been there for quite a long time.


Tom Scanlan


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

There are nine microwave antennae visible on the AT&T Building at the corner of
Copper & 3rd in downtown Albuquerque.  Six are horns, and there are three fairly
standard 8' dishes on a newer, approximately 30 foot lattice tower, one above
the other, aimed roughly southwest.


Two each of the horns are aimed roughly NW, NE and South.  Any idea if the horns
are still used?  With so much going to fiber and with some satellite use, I was
wondering their status.  Anyone know?


Acme Mapper:   http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=47.42681,-88.21107&z=15&t=S


I cannot remember the last name of a gentleman who I met a few years ago, who
had retired from AT&T in Albuquerque several years ago, and worked some on
Sandia Crest at the microwave relay station up there.  He was very familiar with
the various Television routings that ran thru Abq.  His first name was 'Al'.  
He was originally from Michigan and had gotten at transfer to New Mexico.


Tom Scanlan


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 01:19:18PM -0800, Jason Bourne wrote:

> If I'm not mistaken, there was also a Nike-Hercules radar system in
> the vicinity of Waltham as part of the regional air defense system for
> MA during the cold war.

	 As someone who is currently sitting in my living room in the
next town west of Waltham (Weston) as I type this... and who grew up in
the area...

	 Waltham itself did not have any Nike stuff that I remember...
there was a Nike battery directly to the west of Waltham in Lincoln Mass
and the adjacent town Wayland Mass with the radars for it on a hill in
Lincoln that is now a well known nature preserve called Drumlin Farm.
In later years of the system the Wayland launcher site did apparently
have nuclear warheads at one point I believe.

	 A major search radar site for the system and further battery
control radar was located to the south of Lincoln/Wayland/Weston on a
hill in Needham Mass, along with additional launchers nearby.   Other
hills  around Boston had other associated radars serving additional
launchers near them as well.

	 I remember tours of the Nike sites were given to scouts and
school kids... and the weed encrusted remains of the Wayland launcher
site existed into the post millennium era - the hilltop radar sites
having long since been removed - though I believe some of the buildings
at the Needham radar site have been used as a residence/school for
disabled children and were not entirely torn down.

	 At one point in the late 60s or early 70s a major  hill
(Prospect Hill) in Waltham grew a quite large precision Ku band dish
(probably 40-60 feet or more)  that was prominently visible from the
famous Route 128 (now I95).   This was used by AFCRL in early
feasibility studies of use of Ku and higher frequencies in satcom... and
during this era there were a number of small unmanned weather stations
along  the path of the beam from the dish toward the test satellite to
measure local weather conditions (such as rainfall and fog) and how they
impacted propagation.  This dish was torn down around 2000 or so and the
mount and associated building has been reused since as an antenna
platform for various two way radio system antennas including some local
ham repeaters.

	 Another hill in Waltham (Bear Hill) on the other side of I95/128
had one of the very first TD-2 telephone microwave relay sites on it, on
the path between Boston and NY that was the first test of a practical
telco microwave radio system. The Waltham site was the first hop out of
Boston toward NY... and used square delay lens antennas on a 3 story
concrete building rooftop rather than Hogg horns on the later tall 300
foot traditional AT&T microwave towers.   A few years after that route
was established in the late 1940s a non AT&T standard much thinner tower
was put up next to the TD-2 building for a link north to Portland Maine
feed by round dish antennas rather than horns.   That tower was torn
down at the time most microwave was shut down in the very late 80s...
and eventually replaced in the very early 90s by a distinctive tall oil
derrick tower - unlike most other AT&T towers - that was apparently used
in some kind of experimental 6 GHz cellular system propagation studies
in the very early 90s and has mostly been used since as a cell site
tower with a smattering of other radio systems on it.

	 The same hill, Bear Hill, also grew towers for a MCI microwave
path out of Boston and various other microwave system  and still has
multiple towers and quite a few active antennas and links on it -
including some used for SNG trucks in the west of Boston area for links
back to their studios and of course the paging transmitters for the
area... the top of the hill has a good view overlooking Boston to the
east so it is a natural radio site.

	 Nearby Wayland also had, for many years, a large Raytheon lab
that developed radar for the Navy, and there were many experimental and
test radars on the roof and grounds of the facility over the years.   As
a kid growing up in Wayland I was aware (probably more than most other
folks) of the RF from the radar testing... it was sufficient from time
to time to light up fluorescent tubes in the middle school building I
attended classes in on the side of the building facing the radars across
the Sudbury river marshes and to cause all kinds of RFI with A/V
equipment in school classrooms. That Raytheon facility has long since
closed and is in the process of being torn down in the next year or so.


--
   Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die@...  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in
celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."

Enjoy, Steve,

QUOTE--------------------------------------------------------------


I read the above posts and was blown away.  I worked on Project West
Ford, 1960-1964, and can answer some of your questions.

In the summer of 1961 I was a grad student working at the Westford
site.  The RF equipment was a 60 ft. dish, aluminum honeycomb
surface, gain of about 60 dB, beamwidth of 0.1 degree, operating in
the 7.9 to 8.4 GHz band, at the time recently allocated to military
satellite communications and used for active military satellite
repeaters since West Ford.  At Westford we had a 20 kW klystron and a
liquid-helium cooled ruby maser with a 20 K noise temperature on the
bench and a 50 K system noise temperature.  At Camp Parks, CA there
was an identical 60 ft. dish and a 50 kW klystron.  The IF demod gear
was all discrete transistor (except for a few tube op amps and
distributed CATV RF amps off on the side), and filled 6 or 7 oversize
relay racks.  Since the CU needle belt reflected an incoherent
overspread signal dispersed over several kHz and several hundred
microseconds, we had 16 FSK pairs and used a different pair for each
of 16 successive symbols so we could signal faster than the
dispersion time.  The 32 "Channel Receivers" , each about the size of
two current laptop computers, had 6-10 MHz IF, center frequencies
spaced at 100 kHz intervals.  One whole rack held the 32 ovenized
crystal LOs, made by Bulova.  The Channel Receivers used  I-Q
downconverters to baseband, but with square-law diode circuits and
variable-duration op amp integrators.

In that summer of 1961 we had the gear working pretty well, with
constant tuning and tweaking, but the launch was delayed.  SO, we
tested things out by transmitting speech via moonbounce.  Quite
intelligible, good quality, about 20 kB as reported.  Antenna
pointing and Doppler tracking was interesting; pre-computed, punched
paper tape.  Hands-on manual correction of frequency and pointing was
strenuous, but we made it work.  We joked about moving the 0.1 degree
beams around until we found a parabolic crater on the moon with 40 dB
gain.  Never found one.

I'm reasonably articulate, but cannot describe how exciting it was,
or what a great time it was to be young.  Microwave hams reading
this, however, may be able to imagine.  I had done VHF on 6 and 2 m.
as W4VZR in Atlanta in the 50s, with homebrew gear, but this was so
much more fun that I wound up putting ham radio aside for 32 years,
1963-1995, after which I was reincarnated as an HF CW DXer and
contester, and also got back on VHF.

After the successful launch, I was working full time, and worked on
the IF part of a more practical low-rate data demod, called Wescom,
with a 60 MHz IF, binary FSK with 1 or 2 kHz filters, a VCXO and AFC
loop to track the Doppler of up to 100 kHz, and baseband L-C matched
filters of tens of msec.  That filled a foot or two of relay rack,
and the rest of the single rack was filled with discrete-component
digital stuff, one flip flop to a 6 inch square circuit board, and a
sonic delay line integrator memory.  The whole thing provided
teletype at 100, 50, 25, or 12.5 words per minute, using Model 28
teleprinters.  It worked very well between the 60 foot dishes, but
also from either of them to what we called the "Little White Truck",
and what you would call a rover on steroids: a 6-foot 2-axis X-band
dish on angle iron behind a box truck, with a generator, and relay
racks in the truck.  X-band gear was a 1 kW klystron and a paramp.

My boss's boss, the head of the Lincoln Lab Communications Division,
gave a presentation in which he said that so far we had been
improving our detection threshold fast enough to keep up with the
dropping signal levels as the dipoles dispersed, but he was not at
all sure how long we could keep this up.  The answer was, nearly a year.

The reason the technically successful West Ford project was shelved
was indeed, as someone guessed, that active satellites came along and
got reliable far, far faster than anyone predicted in 1960.  So, the
practicality or astronomical interference of passive satcom became
clearly moot.  In 1965 we launched medium altitude all-solid-state X-
band satellites on Titan test launches, 200 mW R.F., and developed an
air-transportable ground terminal with a 15-foot dish, a 10 kW
klystron, and a refrigerated paramp giving a 100 K system noise
temperature.  The modem filled several racks, used first-generation
integrated circuits like those used in Apollo, and included the first-
ever use of forward error correction, with a sequential decoder and
16-ary soft-decision MFSK, and frequency hopping over 20 MHz for anti-
jam. A minicomputer the size of a refrigerator cranked out az, el,
range, and Doppler every 200 msec.  I designed the frequency-hopping
synthesizers and the MFSK demod, then got into system integration and
debugging.  The system was absurdly far ahead of its time.  To either
of the 60 foot facilities via our QRP satellites, that transportable
terminal could provide 5 or 10 kb/sec digital transmission, which
supported high-quality vocoder speech.  It was actually demonstrated
in the Pentagon parking lot.  I was in charge of the baseband
equipment operations at the Westford site for that demo.  Later, I
spent 3 weeks at Camp Roberts, CA helping the Army integrate a copy
of the IF and baseband gear (which filled a semitrailer) with the 40-
and 60- foot X-band dishes they had.  We got it all working.

Thank you, thank you for reminding me that I was once young, and for
a brief moment helping me remember what it felt like.

73, Ben N3UM

If I'm not mistaken, there was also a Nike-Hercules radar system in the vicinity
of Waltham as part of the regional air defense system for MA during the cold
war.

--- On Wed, 11/18/09, Blake Bowers <bbowers@...> wrote:


From: Blake Bowers <bbowers@...>
Subject: [coldwarcomms] pictures
To: coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com
Cc: att-tower-owners@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 8:28 PM


 



I have never seen these before, including the
very interesting Waltham MA picture - could this be the
Graball TN Tower?

I will try to include the durn link this time.

http://massroads. com/?word= microwave

Don't take your organs to heaven,
heaven knows we need them down here!
Be an organ donor, sign your donor card today.











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I have never seen these before, including the
very interesting Waltham MA picture - could this be the
Graball TN Tower?

I will try to include the durn link this time.


http://massroads.com/?word=microwave


Don't take your organs to heaven,
heaven knows we need them down here!
Be an organ donor, sign your donor card today.

I have never seen these before, including the
very interesting Waltham MA picture - could this be the
Graball TN Tower?


Don't take your organs to heaven,
heaven knows we need them down here!
Be an organ donor, sign your donor card today.

As a Canadian Livine In British Columbia,  I have always been interested in
the 1940s crash of a B-36 in the northern part in B,C. It has been documented in
a Discovery channel program called "Lost Nuke".  Any comments on this crash vs
the Thule crash?

Robin K Fry

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I'd hoped that Joe would reply himself, but it seems like he was just interested
in correcting one bit of misinformation.

   Jettisoning the special weapons vs. letting them ride down with the plane was
a policy that evolved over the years & depended somewhat on CONUS vs OCONUS,
nature of the emergency & crew's ability to recover or bail out, etc.

    The crew might know they're jettisoning an unarmed nuclear weapon during a
major in flight emergency, but it might look a little different to the nation
they're overflying at the time, and then in the aftermath you have to hope that
the nation the weapon lands in doesn't decide that it must be a gift for them to
keep, or say that the US can't get it back for a couple months due to 'Customs'
red-tape.


   If the weapons go down with the plane over land, there's a better chance that
critical (pun intended) components will be destroyed & obfuscated by host
platform's explosion/fire & debris, buying time for US forces to intervene with
or without consent.


    The incident that Joe D'Amario chillingly related to us was a major (but not
sole) factor in Chrome Dome being terminated shortly after the event.


Tim

--- In coldwarcomms@yahoogroups.com, David <wb8foz@...> wrote:
>
> Mr. D'Amario:
>
> You said it was procedure to leave the bombs in the aircraft. Yet from what
> I've read of the other cases, they were parachuted out before the crash.
>
> Was there some policy change about this? I can't see why it was better to
> leave them on-board, given the fuel load.
>

Have you ever seen the TV series "Monk," about a detective who has Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder?  This online survey asks for your opinions and feelings
about "Monk," and also asks some questions about mental illness and the media.

This group was randomly selected (along with more than 30 other yahoo groups) by
researchers at Georgia State University, because we want to hear the views of a
wide sample of people.  So, we would really appreciate your help.

If you are 18 or older, please click here to participate:
http://www2.gsu.edu/~joucah/page2000.html

Cynthia Hoffner, Professor
joucah@...