Herb writes:

Hi:

I stumbled onto your site and spent an evening reminiscing. I was surprised to see the 712th AC&W site at NE Cape, St. Lawrence Is., Alaska listed. I spent a year there from Jan `60 to Jan. `61 (yes, I did add my name to the roster) and relived many memories. As a 30352C Radar Maintenance Technician I was very familiar with the installed equipment. The photos of the tower and living quarters on the "upper site" brought back memories. The bubble was originally the air pressurized rubber/fabric like most FPS-3 installations. (For some reason, I recall that our FPS-3 was serial # 17.) It was always a concern to us, given the high winds. As I recall, there were three settings for the control system: a normal setting for calm weather, a higher setting for high winds (65 knots?) and a third setting for extreme wind. We always kept it at the second setting and kicked it up a notch when required. A omplicating factor was trying to keep 3 cups on the anemometer. Even with 2 cups, it was common to read gusts to 80 knots.

I departed McChord AFB on 11 Jan 61 in a charter DC6-B. I had been on a few DC-6s, but none quite like this one. It was more like a bus, rather cheap seats spaced close together. A couple of hours or so later we landed at Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage. Temperature outside was a balmy 33 degrees. About half of the passengers debarked and after a short wait, we were airborne again. This leg was shorter; the view out the windows was boring, just snow and snow covered mountains when we could see anything at all.

We landed at Ladd AFB, Fairbanks; temperature outside was a frigid -30 degrees. The locals claimed were lucky to arrive in such good weather, -50 to -60 was not uncommon. We spent a few days at Ladd getting oriented (e.g. always breathe through nose, never through open mouth, never go out alone), drawing cold weather gear, getting caught up on medical and dental work, etc. For some reason, I missed the group trip to supply for cold weather gear. I could see the building about 1/4 mile away and decided to walk over. After walking less than 100 yards, I came back and waited for the shuttle; my ears were almost frozen. Every parking place had an electrical outlet; every vehicle had an engine block heater. They also had a piece of clear plastic stuck inside the windshield and rear windows. There was an air gap between the plastic and the glass that helped to insulate the windows and keep them clear. Worked very well for such a simple device. After a week or so, the five of us going to Northeast Cape were driven to the Fairbanks airport where we boarded an Alaska Airlines Fairchild F-27 turboprop for the trip to Nome. Finally, we were treated like real people!

We landed in Nome and were told the winds were too high to land on NE Cape. We checked into the Northstar Hotel (I think it was the only hotel). I was immediately taken by the size of the "city". The main business district was about 3 blocks long. Streets were not paved, boardwalks instead of sidewalks. Something you might have expected to see 100 years ago. They had pretty decent food at the hotel, but no milk -- it was reserved for the children. The water in the rooms was hot in one faucet in warm in the other. Never did get used to brushing my teeth in warm water. The hotel was less than 100 yards from the Bering Sea, although everything was frozen -- it was hard to tell where the land ended and the sea began.

One day we noticed a group of Eskimos ice fishing and went out to investigate. They had chopped a hole about 6-8 inches in diameter in the ice. They didn`t use bait, exactly. They had a piece of red plastic fastened above the hook, which they dangled in the water. They waited patiently until a curious fish came by, then just jerked up on the line and snagged it. In 10-15 minutes they each had a half dozen fish, which they said was for dog food. Walking back to the hotel, one of us stepped through a crack in the ice -- it was covered in snow, we didn`t see it. A couple of us grabbed him and pulled him back onto the ice. The water on his pant leg immediately froze. He just brushed off the ice and we continued on our way.

After 5 long days of waiting, the winds at the Cape had abated. We took a taxi out to the airport. It was a good sized airport for such a small town -- evidence of Alaska`s reliance on airplanes. We were shocked to see our ride. It was an old C-45, a Beechcraft 18 twin engine airplane. No seats, just a bench along one side. The other side was filled with cargo and mail. I hoped most of the good things I heard about Alaskan pilots was true. The ride out to NE Cape was uneventful. There was no open sea along the way, but the ice was not exactly solid -- kind of jumbled up.

The site itself was pretty much like the other coastal AC&W sites, a main area at the foot of a hill, a radar on the hilltop, and a tramway up the hill. Like most sites, we also had a road up the hill, but it was usable only in the summer. All the buildings on the main site were connected by enclosed walkways. You could go from one end (supply) to the other (operations) without setting foot outside and do it in relative comfort. The walkways even had windows so you see what you were missing (when they weren`t covered by snow).

The summer of `60 was very busy on the hilltop (I don`t recall ever calling it the upper site as it is in one of the photos). The rubber/fabric radome came down and the fiberglass geodesic dome went up. The living quarters was also built that summer, along with a water storage tank and new power lines. For some reason, the power line replacements (one for the radar, one for everything else) were delayed. I didn`t envy the guys stringing those cables in the early winter wind and snow. Of course, one of the hot-shot electricians got a couple of the phases switched. The first time we switched the antenna over to the new lines, it rotated backwards. Could have been a disaster, but we stopped it quickly (by hand), and no harm was done to the slip rings. For emergency power we had a GMC 60 kW diesel generator on the first floor. We tested it regularly and used it for tech power the month or so that the power lines were being replaced. Made it hard to sleep at first, but we got used to it.

Before the living quarters were built, we lived in the tower. An area on the second floor was partitioned into a sleeping room, and we had a kitchen on the first floor. It was so cold down there, we had to keep the canned milk in the refrigerator so it wouldn`t freeze. There was also a pool table on the first floor, but that was mainly a summertime activity. Tours of duty on the hilltop were two days, I think. Sometimes you`d get stuck up there a week if the wind was too high. Everything came up in the tram, and they didn`t run it in winds over 70 knots. As it was, that was an interesting ride at even 30-40 knots. From the tower landing, there was a covered walkway up to the tower. Wooden cleats were fastened to the floor so we could walk uphill without slipping. We carried food and water for our 2 day stay. In emergencies, we boiled snow for dishwater. There was plenty of frozen food up there and k-rations as well. We used to open the cans of sausages in the k-rations and throw them out the second floor window to hungry white foxes. The foxes would come by 8-10 times per winter.

Alaska weather has strange effects on radar. With the FPS-3, the electronics are mostly on the antenna, and therefore often very cold. Our MDS was routinely -115 dB or better, at least 3 dB better than anything I had previously seen on newer radars. By 1960, jet airliners were commonplace. We could follow the commercial flights out of anchorage bound for Japan out to 240 miles. Very good for such a low power radar. Return flights coming our way weren`t seen until 200-180 miles, still pretty good. Probably due to atmospherics bending the beam.

Radar video data was sent to the main site over the same Western Electric equipment used to send TV video coast-to-coast on a pressurized coaxial cable. That equipment never, ever, failed. When we weren`t up on the hilltop, we took care of the main site equipment, mainly OA-99 scopes and a Stewart Warner GPX-7 IFF.SIF (I think that`s right). When I got there, the GPX-7 was running hot enough to fry an egg on. I added a cooling fan to each cabinet, pulling air down and out the back. They were actually cold to the touch. Before I left, some depot maintenance guys came in and installed the manufacturer`s cooling mod which sat on top and pulled air in the bottom and out the top. It didn`t cool nearly as well because they used much smaller fans. What can you do?

While the hilltop building was going on, they also added on to our equipment room on the lower site. We also received our first UPA-35 -- I loved that scope. I don`t think any maint. tech. was ambivalent, you either loved it or hated it. I made no friends among the radar operators (scope dopes) when I cleaned all the filters on the OA-99s. Sure cooled them down, but it became very noisy.

Precision approach with an FPS-3, sort of: