[Premium-Rx] Racal RA-6778C information

[Thomas Adams]

At 04:40 PM 11/15/2006 -0800, you wrote:
>Thomas Adams wrote:
>
>>Check out this one. It's a goodie.
>>
>>http://jproc.ca/rrp/alert_photos2.html
>>
>>
>>Apparently, they were used at the Canadian monitoring post in the FAR
>>north at Alert.
>>
>>  
>>
>But I wonder why they needed the Tempest qualified radios up there?  One 
>might have thought that the 6790/GM at less than half the price might 
>have done well enough.   Nice set-up though and I bet it was nice and 
>quiet from an RF point of view, unlike here :^)


A couple of reasons.

First off... to reduce the likelihood of multiple receiver installations 
chasing each other's conversion oscillators!

Second... even tho Alert is in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn't be a big
deal for a Soviet Badger bomber, stuffed with electronics, to sit over 
international waters and listen to those same oscillators. It's not a big
intelligence feat to figure out the signal flow in a receiver; you can do
it with deliberate dummy signals as bait to attract the attention of the
receiver site!

Tales abound of KGB doing exactly that in Europe to figure out what enemy
intercept folks were listening to...  even in LONDON, with the Soviet
Embassy's listening post baiting British and American local monitors.


Mr. T., W9LBB