[R-390] FLR 9 Vs, Rhombic

[Gary Pewitt]

Perry, along with Phil Atchly I was one of the people who relayed your data 
to the states from RAF Croughton.  Actually we microwaved it to Barford 
St.John where it went out on tropo scatter.  We didn't get to play with any 
R-390A's though, curse the luck.  Just about everything we handled was 
teletype and it came in on British landlines which used different voltages 
so we had thousands of relays to convert it to our voltages and current 
loops.  Spent a -lot- of time with vector scopes adjusting those 
relays.  Sure was glad when they started replacing them with solid state 
modules.  I wonder if there is anyone on the list that spent time at 
Wheeler in Libya or Laghes in the Azores?
Please do post more.  I am interested even if no one else is.
73  Gary



At 06:14 PM 2/14/2006, Perry Sandeen wrote:

>Todd Roberts asked: FLR 9 Vs other antennas
>
>I was stationed at Karamursel Air Station in mid 1965 during the 
>construction and change over to
>the FLR 9.  This was a radio intercept base run by USAFSS about 60 miles 
>SE of Istanbul.  We had
>two functions; intercept primarily of Russian HF traffic and the 
>maintenance of a 24X7 IDSB radio
>link that started out at IIRC, base at Izmir Turkey near the Turkey - 
>Russian border.  I believe
>this is where Gary Powers took off.
>
>One sideband signal carried 16 channels of multiplexed teletype.  The 
>other was a reserved phone
>line.  After starting at Izmir, we received the signal, relayed it to 
>Croughten, England who
>relayed it to Ft. George Meade and re-transmitted it to Ent AFB in the 
>middle of Colorado Springs
>(Now the US Olympic Training center) which was the USAFSS headquarters. If 
>the phone was picked up
>anywhere along the line it was immediately answered at Ent.  We ran two 
>high power and one low
>power frequencies at one time which we switched depending on the time of 
>day.  About 15 miles away
>was the base transmitter site where they used 30KW linear amps for our 
>high power transmit.
>
>Assigned to the base receiver site I had the opportunity to use the 
>R390A's (I never knew at that
>time there  Non A's existed) on both the rhombics and the FLR 9.  We had 
>around 16 A's in our
>shop.  About a dozen sat on single frequencies all the time.  We had a 
>RTTY setup with a printer
>which we used to "read the mail" of AP, UPI & others.  On 2nd shift we 
>really chewed through the
>paper. IDR the converter we used.
>
>Our AFRTS local station was a 1400KC or so peanut whistle.  We tech 
>supported them and provided a
>AFRTS relay for sports events, usually baseball.
>
>We'd ask the FLR 9 controllers to provide their best match for the 
>frequency and general location.
>  The FLR 9 was better, but nothing to write home about.  Even our receive 
> from England wasn't on a
>3 bay Hughs(sp) receiver didn't seem any more reliable.
>
>But this was the cold war and Viet Nam was going full bore.  Since the 
>Russians were supporting
>the VC any improvement of signal strength was worth the money.  If you 
>look on a globe you will
>see that Istanbul is roughly south of Moscow.  The base location was 
>dictated by politics of the
>Turkish government. [Read: employment of locals in a poor area]
>
>Since all political decisions originated in Moscow it was a great 
>target.  We also had smaller
>intercept stations along the Black Sea.
>
>This is a very long post.  I'll post more later about if people are 
>interested.  Regards Perrier
>
>
>
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Gary Pewitt  N9ZSV   n9zsv at cei.net  479 675 4376
1500 French Prairie Rd. Booneville, Arkansas  72927
Sturgeon's Law "Ninety percent of everything is crap"