unclesyd
Materials
- Aug 21, 2002
- 9,819
On this day in 1957 I was in mad scramble to try to locate the frequency that Sputnik was transmitting on. I was the section chief in a intercept unit stationed in Japan and we had been tasked to record any an all transmissions from any satellites or any attempt to put same in orbit. We had set up some very elaborate equipment to receive signals on the agreed on International Geophysical Year frequency of 172 MHz, no mean feat in those days.
We had witnessed the launch earlier and based on this we knew a Satellite was in orbit, but where and what was it doing. We witnessed the first orbit with no contact on the agreed frequencies. The second orbit passed also with no joy. At this time I got a call from our Ham station about a strange signal around 20 MHz. We caught Sputnik's signal on the next orbit. I had over 50 receivers tuned to the 20 MHz band and another 50 searching the airways to find the a second signal if any. By time of the 4th orbit we had gotten organized and brought all our signal information people on line. We were some what taken aback that there was no intelligence on the carrier wave. After a 32 hour stint in operations a few us gathered in NCO club to discuss the implications of preceding events. All of us were vary degrees of space fans and were knowledgeable about the possibility and implications of orbiting satellites for good or bad. We also knew things that were going on behind the scenes that were most secret and wondered how the US would act after the first shot. One of our group who had information not available to the rest of us made the statement "You ain't seen nothing yet, this is just the beginning". It was strange that after such a long shift I couldn't get to sleep just thinking about all the possibilities that had been shown in all the magazines.
I'm very fortunate to have lived long enough to see the start of something big in engineering and development and lived long enough to see a lot of the stuff of science fiction and Dick Tracy come true.
We had witnessed the launch earlier and based on this we knew a Satellite was in orbit, but where and what was it doing. We witnessed the first orbit with no contact on the agreed frequencies. The second orbit passed also with no joy. At this time I got a call from our Ham station about a strange signal around 20 MHz. We caught Sputnik's signal on the next orbit. I had over 50 receivers tuned to the 20 MHz band and another 50 searching the airways to find the a second signal if any. By time of the 4th orbit we had gotten organized and brought all our signal information people on line. We were some what taken aback that there was no intelligence on the carrier wave. After a 32 hour stint in operations a few us gathered in NCO club to discuss the implications of preceding events. All of us were vary degrees of space fans and were knowledgeable about the possibility and implications of orbiting satellites for good or bad. We also knew things that were going on behind the scenes that were most secret and wondered how the US would act after the first shot. One of our group who had information not available to the rest of us made the statement "You ain't seen nothing yet, this is just the beginning". It was strange that after such a long shift I couldn't get to sleep just thinking about all the possibilities that had been shown in all the magazines.
I'm very fortunate to have lived long enough to see the start of something big in engineering and development and lived long enough to see a lot of the stuff of science fiction and Dick Tracy come true.
