AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
All the pixels, none of the interference to TV reception, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938
#photography
@[email protected] Strong Borg vibes🤖
@[email protected] The dish had been dismantled before I had come to the area. But I can spot this from my neighborhood. I’ve yet to make it to the Nike missile site they turned into a museum in Marin. I always felt the kids were too young to be interested. As teenagers I believe they are now too interested in other things to be interested. Might be something I should just do for myself one day.
@[email protected] Really cool!
This is a stitched imaged made from two side-by-side captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens and a Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50) on a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right +/- 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story (82 foot) monolith was the centerpiece of the “Almaden Air Force Station”, a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD’s SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It’s unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.
The huge rotating antenna was removed shortly after the site’s decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they’re artifacts of what was perhaps humanity’s most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn’t seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.
On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.
@[email protected] Like many bad things, we need to be reminded of them to prevent them from happening again. I think there is a need to preserve some of these spaces and tell their story, along with the stories of people who suffered in the so-called Cold War. I try to remember that I am only here because it never became even a “limited” Hot War. I’m not sure folks nowadays understand that.
