W6SDM
12-03-2011, 07:56 AM
Back in the Cold War days, the Russians were always coming up with new technology in response to whatever the Americans brought to the table. One of the most obnoxious devices ever invented was Over the Horizon Radar. For ham operators as well as guys like me, military intercept operators who listened to the radio twelve hours a day, the noise that this thing made was unbearable. Codenamed "the Curtain", this thing had the sound of a woodpecker pounding on your headphones, like someone had left a CW keyer set on dits at about 15 WPM. It was designed to warn of a US missile launch by detecting it over the horizon. Conventional radar is line of sight.
This thing moved along frequencies like someone was turning a VFO dial slowly while keying dits. The signal would take out half on an amateur band at a time. The antenna for this thing was immense - as you can see in the video it was no small feat.
Of course we had located this thing down to the square millimeter and knew where the signal originated - near Chernobyl. We used to fantasize about a preemptive strike to shut the thing up. Little did we know that a decade later it would be within the radioactive Chernobyl exclusion zone.
http://tourkiev.com/chernobyltour/video4.php
This thing moved along frequencies like someone was turning a VFO dial slowly while keying dits. The signal would take out half on an amateur band at a time. The antenna for this thing was immense - as you can see in the video it was no small feat.
Of course we had located this thing down to the square millimeter and knew where the signal originated - near Chernobyl. We used to fantasize about a preemptive strike to shut the thing up. Little did we know that a decade later it would be within the radioactive Chernobyl exclusion zone.
http://tourkiev.com/chernobyltour/video4.php