[Leica] Cold War Space Radars

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

Fylingdales indeed! It was one of the three BMEWS sites, the other in 
addition to Moorestown being Clear Air Force Station not far from Fairbanks, 
Alaska.

Fylingdales was a bit different from the other two in that it used three of 
the AN/FPS-49 steerable radar dishes, like the one I pictured, all housed in 
"golf ball" radomes, for both sustained scanning just above the horizon, and 
tracking of interesting objects found by scanning. Thule and Clear used four 
and three, respectively, fixed reflectors, each about half again the size of 
a (U.S.) football field, for scanning, and a single steerable dish for 
tracking. I'll post some photos from Thule presently.

I can still remember speaking on the secure phone from Moorestown with 
blokes at Fylingdales (which was an RAF, not USAF, installation) and hearing 
them calling it "Foilingdyles".

?howard


On Jan 19, 2013, at 7:50 AM, Douglas Sharp <douglas.sharp at gmx.de> wrote:

> Brings back memories of the "Golfballs" on Fylingdales Moor in Yorkshire - 
> always a spectacular sight when driving over the moors road from Pickering 
> to Whitby.
> 
> Sadly replaced by a funny looking pyramid, doesn't look half as sci-fi as 
> the three enormous, very spooky, white golfballs (revealed recently as one 
> of the key targets for Soviet ICBMs)
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales
> 
> Cheers