AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
Cold war era pixels, no longer likely to interfere with your TV reception, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938/
#photography
This is a stitched imaged made from two captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens, Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), and a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
Note that the full resolution version isn't currently up on flickr due to a bug preventing the upload of very large images there. Currently a large (but reduced size, 100MP) version occupies a placeholder there.
From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story monolith was the centerpiece of the "Alameda Air Force Station", a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD's SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It's unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.
The antenna was removed shortly after the site's decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
@[email protected] It used to make noise on the intercom system up at SLAC in Menlo Park, and I imagine interfered with quite a few other things as well.
@[email protected] I go hiking up that mountain. You can see it from my back yard.
@[email protected] Another Bay Area Cold War location is the Nike missile site in Marin County. They give tours and on some days guys who manned the station are there to take questions. I’d never heard of a defensive nuke before seeing them there. There were hundreds of these around the country. I think this is the only place where you can see it. Have you been?
@[email protected] I imagine they are mo longer there on but I remember some faded painted warning markings that you were about to enter military property not far off Hicks road onto Uminhum after the cattle gate, back in the late 1980's. It was already decommissioned at that point.
You reminded me of a radar system I worked on back in the 1980s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAVE_PAWS
It's now a museum??