AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
Several additional pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938
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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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This is a stitched imaged made from two captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens, Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), and a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
The full resolution (16152x14043) version is finally up on Flickr. There had been a bug preventing the upload of very large images there, which had forced me to use a large (but reduced size, 100MP) version as a placeholder there.
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 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.
@[email protected] I would expect SAGE to have detected jamming
(either as way too many simultaneous targets, in systematic patterns, OR absurd non-natural noise swamping Rx),
but
unless we had advance intel on the device, SAGE operators would've struggled to guide early fighters to intercept a significant % of actual incoming bandits, which would still be a mission failure.