construction
the duga-3 antenna
this beast is the duga-3, a 900 metre-long radar system based just outside chernobyl that was used during the cold war to detect anti-ballistic missiles from as far as thousands of miles away. the signal it transmitted apparently sounded like a woodpecker, hence the nickname ‘the russian woodpecker’, and was so strong that it resulted in worldwide complaints following disruptions to various broadcasts. at times it could even be heard during telephone calls.
click the photo below for a bigger version.
more info here.
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21 comments for “the duga-3 antenna”
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Cool pictures! Did you take these if I may ask?
very cool!
it’s not an antenna, it’s a net for catching really big flies.
yea, I thought it was some structure for a car cinema later on…
thats like huge …
what do u mean it can be heard on the telephone … ?
u mean cell phone interference ?
probably something like that yea
I heard it’s the home base for N8ZF in Michigan
“u mean cell phone interference ?”
The thing was used in the COLD WAR. Relatively few people had cell phones at all then.
If it was causing interference it obviously was not a passive antenna.
Who posted first?
The people of “Pile Of Photos” or you?…
I think somebody didn’t give credit to somebody else.
sal dip, i’ve never even heard of ‘pile of photos’. i’m not in the habit of swiping stuff from other blogs / sites so unless it’s a huge co-incidence then i’ve got an idea of what happened.
Who posted first?
Ok, the answer is… You. You posted it first, and they’re the ones that didn’t give you the credit since the beginning… now they corrected their mistake.
- pileofphotos.com
This brings back memories. I was a communications person when I was in the army in the late 50’s and had to tolorate the “woodpecker” on a daily basis. It interfered with all of our radio communications. We knew it was coming from Russia at the time.
I wonder how many of the folks who worked in those buildings got sick from the ERP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker
Some info
I was a Radio Op at sea during 70/80’s and the woodpecker was a pain. It used to go from 5 to 20Mhz or so depending on the time of day. Datong made a ‘woodpecker blanker’ especially to mask it. Once on the QE2 the Radio Room was visited by a high official in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) who told us that it was no longer operational. Half a minute later I had found it on 16Mhz and pointed out that this was the signal that had been switched off?! It was known as the ‘Over-the-horizon’ Radar.
Geez I remember it very well - it was always on one of the ham bands - everyone knew it was from the USSR - OTHR (Over the Horizon Radar)
It used to move though which meant you could get away from it sometimes…
I never thought that we would see pictures of the antenna
subcorpus said:
thats like huge …
what do u mean it can be heard on the telephone … ?
u mean cell phone interference ?
I reply:
At the time, a lot of overseas telephone calls were handled via HF (short-wave) radio links. The OTHR tended to tear the heck out of these links.
I remember the “woodpecker” interfering with cb in the early 80’s. It seemingly never stopped, and was worse in the summer due to atmospheric conditions. It didn’t effect cell phone frequencies, wouldn’t matter anyway as there were not many cell phones at the time anyway
I would love to see the tX’s used.
Cheers all, Ken, G4KIR.