[Milsurplus] Conelrad

[jmfranke at cox.net]

There was a failure with the EBS system in the early 1970's.  One Saturday, the attack message was sent out via the AP teletype lines.  The authenticator words matched the enevelope contents at the station I worked, WRAP.  Many stations had different authenticator cards.  They realized the error and sent out the terminator message, but the terminator words did not match everyone's card.  It took forty five minutes to cancel the attack warning.  Two changes I was aware of were the coloring of the attack message tape pink, instead of the plain tan, and relocating the attack message tape from the tie rack to a file drawer.  Apparently the technician on duty had grabbed and sent the wrong tape.

Our station did not have Conelrad crystals.  I elieve the Conelrad station for our area was WTAR.

John WA4WDL
> 
> From: "Ray Fantini" <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu>
> Date: 2005/12/01 Thu AM 09:49:58 EST
> To: <milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: [Milsurplus] Conelrad
> 
> This is not exactly mil radio related but it is radio. For the last
> several years I have worked part time for Clearchannel radio as a
> transmitter engineer. over that time I have had to rebuild three
> different AM sites and this included replacing old Gates ( Harris)
> transmitters of the BC-5 (5Kw) and BC-1 (1Kw) series. all of these
> transmitters were from the late forties and early fifties and were
> equipped with the dual crystal selector for the second "Conelrad"
> crystal. Asked a couple of the old timers around here and no one
> remembers for certain if their were any occasions where they actually
> tested the system, their is some speculation that once a year or so they
> would do a national test and everyone would switch to that channel then
> but that would be a test with no audio, but the question I have is if
> you had to operate on the Conelrad channel don't think you would have
> much output unless your regular broadcast channel was close to the
> Conelrad channel. The narrow tuning range of the transmitters and
> antenna tuning networks would probably give you only twenty or thirty
> watts or so, and all the old transmitters I have seen have no provisions
> for a second set of networks for Conelrad. Its amazing how almost all
> the people working in broadcasting now have no idea that this system
> ever existed, many don't remember the EBS system and the red
> authenticating envelope or how you were not allowed under penalty of law
> to open the envelope before it expired. and last but not least everyone
> has heard the story of how the Japanese were able to receive the AM
> broadcast from Hawaii and possibly use that for tracking towards Pearl
> Harbor, but is their any evidence that the Russians twenty years later
> would have used commercial broadcasting for target location? would have
> thought they had systems more advanced then that?
> Ray Fantini KA3EKH
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