Woodpecker.

This is coolbert:

Thanks here to the tip from Dirk and his blog.

The Woodpecker. And not Woody either!

The Russian Woodpecker. How well I remember this one. Any person either using or listening to the high frequency band [3 MHZ - 30 MHZ] from the mid-1970's until 1989 will recall the consternation caused by this "disturbance". An annoyance of major proportions, no amelioration! Click on the audio file .ogg and you can hear the Woodpecker for yourself.

An annoyance now gone for several decades, ending with a most surprising twist?

"The Russian Woodpecker was a notorious Soviet signal that could be heard on the shortwave radio bands worldwide between July 1976 and December 1989. It sounded like a sharp, repetitive tapping noise, at 10 Hz, giving rise to the "Woodpecker" name . . . The signal was long believed to be that of an over-the-horizon radar (OTH) system . . . NATO military intelligence . . . having photographed it and given it the NATO reporting name Steel Yard."

Again, a major annoyance for over a decade, and a much speculated about signal. It was surmised, correctly, that this was an over-the-horizon [OTH] radar system, able to detect at the moment of launch [?] American ICBM or cruise missiles.

Called Steel Yard by NATO - - and for good reason. The receiving antenna was of massive proportions, unbelievable almost, the scale of which is mind-boggling. NOTHING ever built by the U.S. even remotely resembled this monstrosity?



The Woodpecker laid low by an unexpected and unanticpated source - - nuclear radiation?

That receiving antenna of Steel Yard [the transmitter was not co-located] within the 18 mile [30 kilometer] exclusion zone of Chernobyl. Steel Yard rendered inoperable by the melt-down of the nuclear reactor, the area within the exclusion zone declared unfit for human habitation!

[more radioactive material was spewed into the atmosphere by the Chernobyl melt-down than by all the previous above-ground nuclear tests combined!!]

Steel Yard now a big hunk of useless metal, just sitting there, a monument for the ages [at least until it rusts away], an epic construction on the scale of the pyramids now without purpose!

coolbert.