Cobra Mist - The USA's Failed Over The Horizon Radar
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มี.ค. 2023
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Hi Comrade Wingray.
Great drone footage you've taken.
The divs (i.e. all the viewers and subscribers ) will love all this wonderful drone footage you've taken.
Virtually all of them are simpletons. But don't tell them I said that.
Many of your viewers go to "clothes banks" as well as "food banks".
Wow!
@@RingwayManchester The internet is a strange place full of strange people 🤣
@Stakker Humanoid do the world a favor and stay out of sperm banks
@@RingwayManchester Looks like you've got a live one on the line, time to reel him in!
A prime example of pure drivel - nothing short of a waste of bandwidth and grey matter (if applicable).
Reportedly the guy in charge of the installation held the position of Cobra Commander. Yo Joe!
Now we know
@@defective6811 and knowing is half the battle.
@@RustyorBroken GEE EYE JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
@@defective6811 He’s got the kung fu grip!
Good God.
Gi Joe renage was my childhood.
Old 80's Joe you guy's are old.
Was station on the site (Jan ‘72 to Jun ‘73). “Radio Research Squadron”, RRS, or known as “Royal Research Squadron” to satisfy the RAF/Brits. Naval Research Labs (NRL) assist in the research. I was lucky enough to garner some UNIVAC mainframe time and learn FORTRAN 4 during research downtime. The entire tour and British was one of the best in my Air Force career.
I’ve worked in the Cobra Mist building (BT had some equipment in there), went over in a landing craft and drove my van round the island. The BBC had the building at the time. One thing I remember was the abandoned stainless steel canteen, everything was spotless and looked just like it was awaiting its next batch of diners. I believe it’s being stripped of cable at the moment.
I had to go to that control building in the late 90s to repair a photocopier for the BBC. The guys there took me on a tour of the building and it’s huge, with accommodation, eating and recreation areas. It was a bit spooky at the time as there were only three of us in the place at the time! No wonder it cost so much. Incidentally the areas of Orford Ness and nearby Bawdsey are steeped in secret military history and well worth a bit of internet investigation.
Bawdsey Manor is a very interesting place like you say. It's where they started testing of radar. I watched a programme about it and they used a metal plate attached to a bicycle to get early reflection testing.
@@woodybollox Actually the very first trial Chain Home installation was on Orford Ness. A few remnants of it can still be seen today.
@DerekP I think but I might be wrong. Bawdsey Manor had one of the chain home towers near it. Not sure if it's still there. I should do as I'm not far away in Ipswich
@@woodybollox Bawdsey did indeed get a standard production Chain Home site, probably the first such site. It also became the main training centre for RDF ('radar') staff. Today it has a radar museum in one of the original buildings.
@@derekp2674 I remember watching an old film where they had metal sheeting welded to trade bikes for testing the radar reflections at different frequencies. I've always liked the topic. I think it's what got me into ham radio yrs ago. I started tinkering with stuff like that from when I was about 10.
I mentioned Cobra Mist to a local who'd never heard of it. He asked, "Is it a nightclub or a racehorse?"
25 miles up the coast from me. I've heard old folk say it made some of their small fishing boats sparkle on metal parts when fishing close to it.
Wouldn’t surprise me. I used to work for a defense contractor and when they were testing antennas no one was allowed in that area.
@Jim Allen over the short period of its use it must of been great to use and see it working. I mean with the rf output it had focused in its fairly small beam width im surprised it never caused mayhem on small boats etc in its line off sight.
The same effect on offshore fishing boats occurred from the air defence radar at Neatishead, Norfolk. Now part of yhe Raf air defence museum.
@Stuart Buxton very interesting mate.
Good that Radio Caroline has made use of the site . Love listening to them !
A similar over the horizon backscatter radar installation was built and operational from 1990-1997 at Moscow ,Maine USA.
I did some work on an Air Force system in the late 80's or early 90's. Separate stations for Tx and Rx at Christmas Valley , OR and Tule Lake, CA. Analysis and feedback was at Mountain Home AB in Idaho.
The system failed for a number of reasons, but one was that they could not maintain a good ground plane.
I was out exploring the Tule Lake site today. Its amazing how much is still there and only locked with a pad lock on the doors. I could hear the hum from the transformers, so its still getting power.
How on earth do you track down all this detailed data? Another great job! Very odd that with all the resources of the US military that they never found the cause of the interference.
There's a great book on Orfordness, called "Most Secret: The Hidden History of Orfordness".
Well they never disclosed they found it…..doesn’t mean they didn’t
If it was not intentional interference it’s odd they did not detect it before they built out the project. Further they built the transmitter first which is backwards. I think this was out of RCA’s wheel house and they were perhaps the wrong contractor. I know even ham radio operators found the Russian system so annoying, and the refusal of Russia to acknowledge it even existed, they successfully banded together and interfered with the system helping lead to it being shut down.
Wikipedia often has some great sources their article on Cobra Mist is fairly extensive.
Of course the Cobra"office" had other technologies & systems besides over the horizon including Cobra Judy, Cobra Dane, Cobra Ball, ...
Doesn't the cobra forename just mean it's a defense intelligence project?
Thanks Lewis. Great research (as usual) and many photos I have never seen before. Do any recordings of the transmissions exist? The whole of Orford Ness is extremely secretive and mysterious with its nuclear assembly and bomb fall testing facilities. Its a National Trust property now, and accessible by a small ferry. I recommend a visit. Be sure to check opening times beforehand. The book, Most Secret: The Hidden History of Orford Ness, is a must read before any visit.
The extremely secretive elite unit known only as the National Trust!
Research? He was reading entire paragraphs from the wikipedia page verbatim.
Nice one... There is an over the horizon radar system operating in Australia called Jindalee.
The biggest and most advanced in the world
I was a kid in the mid 1970's on the Canadian west coast when I recalled tuning into a loud 10 Hz echo delay tone located just above the AM broadcast band roughly between 1600 to 2000 kHz the signal consisted of a pair of 10 Hz tones with one tone beating slightly faster interacting with the other tone going in and out of synch every 1 minute or so giving it an double tone and echo delay effect. . This signal was active day and night. This was not the same as the famous Russian Woodpecker which I also remember as well. I believe this signal went silent around 1979 or 80 My guess it was an over the horizon radar system from the nearby USA.
Id love to see a video about the christmas valley Over the horizon backscatter radar transmitter located in the middle of nowhere Oregon. I think it was called christmas valley air-force station.
Looks like Sizewell B up the coast in the closing shots.
I can see my house (in the clouds) from there.
Cobra's mist is my favorite drink combo
Twu
Lovely work Andy
US: We need a place to build this radar site.
England: You can have this swamp nobody's using.
USSR: This swamp is now a nuclear target.
*UK
Crazy! Very unique. Excellent work again, thank you!
I hope you're going to make a video on the Australian Jindalee OTH radar system. It apparently works quite well.
Crazy amount of work!
Nice job as always my man.
I appreciate that thank you so much!
Many thanks for yet another very interesting video.
Thanks for another good video, Didn't Radio North sea International cause interference when it broadcast on 186 meters, when anchored near bye, I seem to remember they were backed indirectly from East Germany
While you are on this OTH side trip. How about AN/FPS-118 OTH-B, Australia's Jubilee, and AN/FPS-115 PAVE PAWS?
Close to the Rendlesham Forest incident I think there's still a lot we don't know about still to this day classified experiments on the site.
There is no evidence of UFOs from outer space visiting Earth. Plenty of low grade evidence, not a shred of high grade evidence.
Not really.
Enjoying the series. Great channel, as always. A couple of thoughts for later videos or the like (perhaps old news) ... The "Border Blasters" like XERM had importance for a while here in the USA, and "Wolfman Jack" was a really interesting character (listened to him, when I was a very little kid with radios). I remember the scene from "American Graffiti" too. Cheers
XERB We listened to him when I was in college up in Eureka Calif. Mucho wattage!
@@jservice6594 That's the one. Thanks for the correction ... All the best.
Another quality video Lewis.
Great, we’ll researched piece as usual. I notice, looking in Google maps that the system appears ‘the wrong way round’ rather than directly towards the East. There’s also a train of thought that it was in some way responsible for ‘The Rendlesham Forest’ incident.
Nice report!
Thanks again
Superbly informed
Love your videos! Subscribed!
Thanks for subbing!
Another brilliant video ! Thank you ! Al.ze
They’ve built more OTHRs since then so either they figured out what the source of the noise was or were able to mitigate with better signal processing. I hate transient interference, just when you think you’ve solved the problem it pops up again and spooks you.
Should it not be possible to figure out if the noise is from within or outside?
Also, what kind of "noise" are we talking about? Actual noise or some systematic process?
You should do a video on the network of 12 AN/FPS-35 long range radar antennas made by Sperry in the 1960's to succeed the Sperry/IBM made SAGE Semi Automatic Ground Environment system made in the 1950's. The most famous of these antennas is still located on the end of Long Island New York at Camp Hero at Montauk Point.
Cool! Thank you...🇺🇸 😎👍☕
Looks dope
Excellent video. A long time since I've read it, but one interesting comment I recall in the declassified noise investigation report is that whether the noise's origin was jamming or not, they admitted that degrading the system with a mobile jammer would have been fairly trivial to accomplish. I wonder if modern day OTHR systems are equally vulnerable?
I seem to recall one of the Sunday Paper Magazine supplements did an article on this or similar technology way back in 73-74. Also around the same time in the supplements, an article on the UK Microwave Backbone system and RSG links.
Interesting. Is Jindalee in Australia one of the only over the Horizon radars still running? Heard they are better at detecting stealth aircraft
For the most part that's due to fire control radars on aircraft being predominantly X band pretty much exclusively until relatively recently. For that reason most stealth efforts went towards reducing radar cross section in that frequency range. The B2 and almost certainly the b21 as well (RAS baby) have more of a broadband stealth ability. Even then while they can detect for the most part these systems are too slow or the frequency limits the resolution to provide a track or firing solution.
I would be interested if you did a piece on the Cobra Dane radar sytem
Very interesting picture of them using retired and very old Leyland turntable ladders for access to the array
The content you produce is brilliant, but with all the research you do, do you sleep? Thank you for the recent series on Radar / listening stations around the world, it has been really interesting. 73
I'm in the US. Never heard of this but fascinated and watched quite a bit of "the Russian woodpecker"
I wondered when you’d get round to this one
"which is close to a billion dollars today". Zoinks Scooby 😲
There was an over the horizon radar in oregon. A place called xmas valley
Can you do a video on the over the horizon radar we have over here in Australia?
This location is steeped In surreptitious intelligence us history
..I like how the film ...the number station...was filmed in this area also ..... and now the area is home to caroline 558 great vid Lewis
True. They both adopted the Australian Jindalee system in the end. The Darwin site can see half way across Indonesia. It's how they were able to detect and intercept illegal people smuggling boats 1500 kms away.
There isn’t a Darwin OTHR site
impressive to think the range covers most of Indonesia
\
Nice one :-)
During the 1980s, the U.S. military proposed an OTH radar site in western Minnesota and other parts of the USA. This project was never implemented.
With the transmitter sites how much power are they putting out? I'm curious of the effects on people and things did it heat people up when they were near?
Thanks RM. Always Great Stuff****
Might be worth you investigating the Australian Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar...
@RingwayManchester >>> Great video...👍
Hi Lewis. I think the old communications place at foxhall heath about 20 miles from Orford would be a very interesting investigation for you. It used to have lots underground and large microwave dishes. I think it's a museum now too.
When I was in the scouts in the 70’s we had a tour round the building, it was an interesting visit! We went to several American sites in the area over time, got given root beer which tasted like mouthwash.
@@timsytanker are you on about the foxhall site or Orford
@@woodybollox visited Foxhall with the scouts. Have worked in Cobra Mist for BT.
@@woodybollox If I remember correctly, Foxhall was a relay station.
@timsytanker I think it was for oversea patched comms and I think they called it operation tea bag if I remember
Fortunately the UK had its own OHR system and happily fed data to Washington DC via an encrypted satellite link.
The AN/FPS-108 COBRA DANE was far from a failure... Even to this day is operates to scan what our Satellites cannot see....It was a terrible duty site... Shemya is not a very Human Friendly location
I thought the whole of Orford Ness including Cobra Mist and AWRE buildings were National Trust now, didn't realise Cobra Mist LTD owned any of it.
Research Projects are never a failure, there learning opportunities.
The OHR in Australia radar can detect aircraft taking of from Singapore.
Orford Ness was the UK nuclear bomb test facility aswell
Sad but true Russia , Australia and China have OTHR - as they have the best Physicists mathematicians and researchers.
I love the odd and historical stuff you dig up and share about radio and communications
I live not to far from what I suspect is one of first or at least early Merv Griffen owned radio stations. It totally dominated both listenership and geographic area for a long time locally being much better and farther reaching signal than anyone else. Partially I believe because of the antenna location that I have been told has one transmit tower and three active reflecting antennas.
Can you elaborate on the english usage of the AN prefix? It was my understanding that the prefix indicated shared component hardware between Army and Navy (thus the AN prefix). I was first exposed to this while examing AN/UYK-20 systems. Maybe I am misinformed.
Look up "Joint Electronics Type Designation System"
@@RCAvhstape Ah yes, excellent. Thank you! This makes sense... it being a US-led program.
I know electronic parts were labeled “JAN” or Joint Army-Navy. Old vacuum tubes had this on the box, but those are very hard to find now.
That's what it meant when I was in the service, I worked with the AN/PVS5 thermal sight =Army Navy Passive Viewing System 5
Was it causing problems with people's radio reception if not why was it shut down.
just a few miles away from me!
Have any you guys tried making a small scale fanned dipole? It's an interesting concept.
Is it feasible?
@@joachimmikalsen1676 might have be in the gigahertz spectrum. Idk.
@@DirtyPlumbus interessting.
Looks like Burningman from the air.
cool
The handwriting on that investigation report looks suspiciously like my fathers, I dont think it is (he was not that clever), but it is what I would call Civil Service (GPO) Standard.
It failed because they spent longer trying to think of a "COOL NAME" than designing it
I suspect that the best OHR is based in Gibraltar which is most likely to be vastly better than the Russian Woodpecker.
Their mis~snake was a mist opportunity
and FSK or frequency shift of the received signal feels to me like a change in the refractive index of the signal with a change in velocity factor it changes the arrival time/frequency of the signal in much the same way as a pencil appears to bend in a glass of water. It is a function of the arrival time of the light/RF.
I'm loving these articles, Also Australia has an OTHR operational I believe.
Called Jindalee Operational Radar Network, apparently works very well.
@@wilf609 It does, I worked at the TX and RX sites in Western Australia for 7 years before retirement. They are situated out in the desert in a radio quiet area. There is an equivalent site out at Longreach in Queensland. They were operated by Lockheed Martin for the RAAF
Where is MH370 then?
@@empe811 with your mom.
@@Darryl_Frost oh, a moron detected. This was a tricky question and you failed with such a silly, agressive answer.... A pity.
It's too bad it couldn't have been used for radio astronomy after they decided it could not be used for radar.
Joint British American usually means it end in disaster.
What helicopter is that?
I worked on and designed radar systems within radar.
Noise detection and discovery was handed over to Sri, what's that was a real job for hams and if the government knew what a resource they have in ham radio, maybe they would use us more often. Hams khow to find noise.
i heard its facing wrong way?
Did they borrow the local fire bridgade with its Dennis trucks and ladder equipment to assemble this ?
NASA has a large satellite? That looks kinda like this off of cr101 outside Kermit texas
I can send drop pins if you would like to investigate
Jindabyne, running for 30 years. OVER THE HORIZON.
Jindabyne.
Jindalee
Every piece of equipment I've owned from RCA was super noisy. Par for the course I guess.
The transmitter built on the site after 1973 was the new "Aspidistra", after the Crowborough site shut down.
Also along the way there are the Pagodas, chambers to vibration test live nuclear bombs, or at least I think they were armed for that purpose. Yes, the boffins were completely bonkers back then.
I think they only used dummy warheads for those tests.
When the comments section reads like a war thunder forum thread.
Imagine the progress we missed out on by wasting so much resources on numerous dumb projects.
Who wants to turn $1.5 million into $10k in scrap? Air Force says Hold my beer!
Too bad it flopped! At least they tried.
I am willing to bet the "noise" that couldn't be found or eliminated was Soviet in nature... Think about it...
👍👍👍👍👍👍
Did anyone notice the red things look like swastikas? Just seems weird.
Whut
Just use satellites
Typical US hubris in the UK, with Suffolk being the victim yet again.
In the '80s and '90s the county was littered with American listening stations within large and small geodisic domes and sometimes just left exposed to our relatively atypical weather and magnetic anomalies which had been known to the Air Ministry since the 1940s.
Just because the USAF had Lakenheath and Mildenhall as their assumed US enclaves in the UK complacency was baked into American thinking in that part of the country.
Successive Westminster governments wanted to please America at the expense of British people and poorly shielded emissions from many 'golf ball' installations resulted in medical symptoms among locals which were hushed up -- especially by the Blair-Brown dictatorship. The Feltwell installation was especially troubling to the medical profession.
By contrast, the Fylingdales home grown systems through two separate iterations did (and does) the OTH early warning job the Americans so spectacularly failed to do and in the process did extensive damage to the Orford Ness region and access to it.
RAF Feltwell was a passive space surveillance system. There was no RF involved with its operation.