Whats left of a Russian Duga-3 radar site

[Homer J Simpson]

Interesting to watch.

10 MW output power !




Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga-3

[EEVblog]

Wow, working until 1989 and it's in that state now? 

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

I remember back around 1985  or so every time I used my farther's VEF 201 radio receiver I always stumble on this "woodpecker" signal on one of channels and wondered what it was.

[Vgkid]

Thanks for the video. Looks like a tornado was inside. Strange to see piles of circuit boards, especially the ones with the power to-3's on them.

[wagon]

Looks like it's been raided for scrap metal. 

[Artlav]

Wow, working until 1989 and it's in that state now? 

Well, when the USSR collapsed a lot of the stuff was just abandoned without locks or guards or even closed doors.
Factories, spaceships, military bases, radar sites, and so on.
In many places it just stays like that.

There used to be a "make-anything" experimental electronics manufacturing complex behind my previous working place, which by 2010 was essentially empty for a decade or so, with some dressing covers placed in front, and desolation inside.
Only the PCB manufacturing facility survived, probably because it's the only thing that could still turn up a profit.

[TerraHertz]

Wow, working until 1989 and it's in that state now? 

Copper strippers. I see this kind of ruin a lot, even here in Oz. Once security goes, every ounce of copper leaves the building soon after. It was sad to hear her wondering what all the in-floor ducts were for. Despite them still having cable brackets. Just no cables. The cut-off connectors and sections of stripped cable sheathing were a dead giveaway too.
Should have looked more like this. A very rare case of a building being demolished with a lot of cables still present:

[TerraHertz]

It was interesting to notice the electronics rooms that were set up as Faraday cages, with all-metal walls, ceiling, etc, and contact fingers all around the doors. Obviously, a good idea for electronics right next to a 10 MW phased array transmitter antenna.

I wonder what maximum volts per meter field strength that thing could fire?
And what that would have reduced to, about 8Km away along the beam axis?
Could the power line running almost directly between Chernobyl and Duga-3 have had some unexpected beam-focussing effect?

The reason I wonder, is because I bet the Chernobyl nuclear power plant wasn't build with full Faraday cage rooms for any of the control systems. And it's only 8.5 Km away. And appears to be in the arc of potential beam fire from Duga-3.

When that accident happened, there was a lot of uncertainty about why it happened. Eventually if I recall correctly, all the blame was put on the operators, for running some tests carelessly. But I do seem to recall a few reports of instrumentation at the power plant doing weird things that night. No I don't have references. The possible significance only occurred to me long after. At that time I didn't even know Duga-3 existed.

So I wonder... did someone screw up at Duga-3, and point the beam directly at it's own power station? Or due to a hardware error?
Could it have been that EM interference alone that caused the accident by messing with the reactor control systems?
Or some combination of reactor testing and the EM-field messing up the electronics?
It would be a fair bet that if Duga-3 had anything to do with the accident (or not-so-accident), we'd *never* hear of it.

I wish someone had records of whether Woodpecker was transmitting that night.
Of all the nuclear plants in Russia, it had to be the one right next to the world's most powerful phased array radar site, that went boom.

Here's a diagram...

[Radio Tech]

Interesting,
I do remember hearing this thing across the bands.

[SeanB]

You could even receive it in the Southern hemisphere, as they would merrily run into the shortwave broadcast bands if the conditions allowed it, and would often deliberately use the frequencies the transmitters that broadcast deliberately to the USSR used ( BBC and VOA) as both jamming and as a use of the return path to the transmitter for a calibration point.

[Artlav]

The reason I wonder, is because I bet the Chernobyl nuclear power plant wasn't build with full Faraday cage rooms for any of the control systems. And it's only 8.5 Km away. And appears to be in the arc of potential beam fire from Duga-3.

Interesting idea, but i don't think the dates add up.
The reactor that blew up was finished in 1983, while Duga-3 was working since 1980.

I would also be surprised if things like nuclear reactors weren't built with failing safely during EMP events in mind, especially in the middle of the cold war.
But then again, it wasn't even designed with simple safety features in mind...

You could even receive it in the Southern hemisphere, as they would merrily run into the shortwave broadcast bands if the conditions allowed it

And the fun part was that regular amateur radio people fought back successfully, forming the Russian Woodpecker hunting club: http://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html

[Hypernova]

That place has realllly seen better days. Would be great if the Russian government declassify some photos of the control room during the glory days eventually.

And somebody should go grab those core memory modules and put them up on ebay. They deserve a better end then rotting out in the elements.

[xrunner]

Trashed! 

Wish they would have got a lot closer to the antennas.

[Andy Watson]

Wish they would have got a lot closer to the antennas.

https://youtu.be/0l_4fzJv_i0

That's a really weird antenna construction!  Head over to youtube and search for "duga3" - lots more stuff.

[German_EE]

Everything you see, everything you touch, everywhere you walk in that area is radioactive because of the incident at Chernobyl. Even if given the chance (and I've been a radio geek for decades) there is no way I would go anywhere near that place. One Alpha emitter drawn deep into the lungs when I breath in and it could all be over.

THIS is why the installation was abandoned so quickly and left to rot

[Fraser]

Over the Horizon Radar is highly classified even to this day. It would not surprise me if the more sensitive elements of the installation were stripped out upon closure. The rest would be just scrap and likely too costly to remove, just like the aerial array. The building would just be left to return to nature.

I witnessed a 'woodpecker' OHR first hand whilst serving in Darwin N.T. The Australians were carrying out military 'Exercise Kangaroo 92' in March 1992. My 24 HF receivers were on different frequencies across the HF spectrum. I listened as the Woodpecker worked its way up the HF band knocking out each and every one of my encrypted links. It was close as it even got into our telephone system and was flashing the extension LEDs in time with its pulses. It was a bit spooky as I was on my own at the station and it was around 10pm. The woodpecker got into anything electronic with some weird effects. That interference on the HF spectrum shut down our operations for that evening, so I got to go home early for a change 

There were soldiers in Black out kit all over the place during that Exercise. There is something a bit surreal about driving down bush roads in the day and seeing soldiers dug in at the side of the road and blacked out soldiers sneaking around at night ..... great fun to witness the exercises though.

So the Aussies have  an OHR too     The OHR is by no means limited to Russia alone. That is why its in-depth signal processing detail will remain sensitive for many years to come.

Aurora

[G7PSK]

Duga 3 was first heard in 1976. But I remember hearing woodpecker like sounds on HF radio in the mid 1960's so who was that the US or the Russians.

[xrunner]

That's a really weird antenna construction!  Head over to youtube and search for "duga3" - lots more stuff.

Thanks, found another good one, all the way to the top. Can you imagine the poor slob who might have had to go all the way to the top in the dead of winter to repair a connection? 

https://youtu.be/YeLjJXvtmxo

[T3sl4co1l]

That's a really weird antenna construction!  Head over to youtube and search for "duga3" - lots more stuff.

Not so -- they are simple dipoles.  The cage structure widens bandwidth (compare to a conical dipole which has several octaves of bandwidth), so that they were probably able to cover most of the SW band without clunky antenna tuners.  The impulse response is also pretty good (not as good as a well made exponential horn, but that would be prohibitively large at this frequency; and much better than a spiral or conical helix, which is heavily dispersive), an important feature for wideband radar purposes.

The dipole array, obviously, is mounted in front of a huge ground plane -- which reflects the energy back (at some compromise to bandwidth -- it will only be a (2n+1)/4 wave distance over particular ranges), enforcing the directivity of the array.

Tim

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

I don't think construction of these antennas are really of any secret to radio engineers. "Everyone cooks with water" - I like to repeat that old German proverb. Perhaps some particular details such as actual bandwidth kept secret.

Important stuff is in algorithms and code that processes data to sift through the tonnes of noise returned. I can imagine that every high altitude airline flight every weather balloon - everything shows up unless you filter it out. Vyacheslav Tuzlukov - who is now a professor in Korea somewhere wrote a book on subject - interesting read if anyone interested. I think he could have been involved in designing this antenna because he was working in USSR at that time.

[PA0PBZ]

Is there any documentation about what they could actually see with this radar, like what size of objects at what distance? I remember the sound when they were transmitting in one of the ham radio bands and I always wondered how effective these things are.

[Fraser]

The transmitters and aerial are no Secret as has been stated. They are just physics at work.

The processing and capabilities of the complete system are highly classified as they form part of a technical countermeasure. Disclosing such information in Russia would likely be treated as treason and a foreign national asking too much about it..... spying 

Aurora

[Bud]

Stop confusing people. Chernobyl and the area is Ukraine, not Russia.

[Fraser]

Wiki on Australian OHR system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Network

I wonder why it points north 

Wiki also provides a half decent overview of the worlds systems. They are not that rare.

Aurora

[Fraser]

@Bud,

Check your facts please, this was a RUSSIAN OHR system ! No confusion there at all.

Its location does not indicate its ownership and where the data went 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga-3

If you acted against it, or its capabilities, you acted against Mother Russia 

Aurora