[R-390] John's R 390A article MORE??

[quartz55]

I was in the 78th USASASOU in Berlin working at Teufelsberg, or Trammelsberg, 63-65 (lived in the old SS barracks at Lichterfelde) and we had plenty of the R390As in the Russian and German section listening to the East Block maneuvers.  I think they also had a few for RTTY, but I never got into a lot of the sections that were on the base at the time. The whole place was on a need to know basis.  When I was there I think there were about 6 wings of one floor about 80' long and a central tower with the golf ball on it, it expanded quite a bit when I left and turned into the 'Berlin Brigade'.  I was in the Orange section where we had the microwave dish in the golf ball tuned into a 64 channel PPM signal from the East German Central Committee.  Recorded each channel on reel to reel Revox with vox control and the translators had some sort of reel to reel playback deck that had fast forward, and reverse buttons on them, they were probably some GI contract item, I've never seen them anywhere else or since.  I was a German linguist there.  The audio was translated right there and the digital tapes were sent back to NSA.

Everytime I mention I was in the ASA, someone tells me they were too, there must have been a hellavalota guys in the Army Security Agency back then, or a lot of people are making up stories.  I think there were at least 3 stations in Berlin, the dittyboppers near the mountain I was on, and also the AF/Army ELINT station at Templehof, I got to go over there one day.  There were probably more stations.  Ours was USM620K at Teuflesburg.  I'm sure that's classified info if anyone cares, not sure what you could get out of it though.

Dave
N3DT