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G0FTD > JAMMER 22.03.05 01:24l 112 Lines 5314 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 489904G0FTD
Read: DK5RAS GUEST OE5EWL
Subj: Cold War Jamming Part 1/4
Path: DB0FHN<DB0MRW<DB0SON<DB0HBN<DB0SWR<DK0WUE<I0TVL<CX2SA<GB7CIP<GB7SXE
Sent: 050321/1647Z @:GB7SXE.#38.GBR.EU #:25598 [Hastings] FBB7.00i $:489904G0FT
From: G0FTD@GB7SXE.#38.GBR.EU
To : JAMMER@WW
The original was written by I. Hallas, and the English version is at:
http://www.okupatsioon.ee/english/mailbox/radio/radio.html
There are some pictures and diagrams too.
----
Radio Recievers in the USSR.
In 1940-1941 it was forbidden, and radio receivers were confiscated.
Later, radios were permitted. But in 1950-1951, the Soviets began to use
special radio transmitters to jam the broadcasts which penetrated the
USSR from abroad, in the languages of the nations which were trapped in
the Soviet Union.
A special network of radio transmitters was constructed all over the
Soviet Union for this very purpose. Jamming was done in the whole
spectrum of broadcasting wavelengths, from long waves to short waves
13th meter. We know that jammers existed also in the "people's
democracies", but we don't have any information about them.
The jammers not only covered the nation which they were meant for, but
their effect could be felt even in Europe, beyond the Iron Curtain
(what insolence!). Just recently, a traveller from Germany told me how
their short waves used to be full of the clutter from Russian jamming
transmitters. But now their airwaves are clean.
One means of preventing the listening of foreign broadcasts was to limit
the number of short wave bands that radio receivers could pick up.
Radio receivers manufactured in the Soviet Union lacked part of the
shortwave spectrum. They could not pick up the short waves used for
transmitting during the day. If there are 8 shortwave transmission bands
11 13 16 19 25 31 41 49 m
25 21 18 15 12 9 7 6 MHz
and the most commonly used ones are 16-49m, then Soviet radio receivers
could pick up only shortwave bands 25-49m.
The following article gives a picture of how radio broadcasts were jammed
in Estonia during the Soviet era. A similar system functioned throughout
the USSR.
This story gets its start from the fact that, in 1955, I graduated from
the Tallinn Electromechanical Technical School, as a radio specialist.
In those days, graduates were assigned to a job for three years, by a
special government commission (we called the system a slave market). I
was lucky to get a job in Tallinn, at the Estonian SSR Radio Centre,
which was part of the Ministry of Communications.
I was assigned, along with a schoolmate, to Radio Centre site nr. 65,
on Sitsi Hill. It was located on Kopli Street, at the Kopli-Tööstuse
intersection, just before Kopli Street starts going downhill. Before
the War, during independence, this had been the Ranna Radio Station.
The antenna masts had been constructed by my teacher from the Technical
School, engineer Albert Põdrus. In the foundation of one of the masts
there was even a brass plate bearing Põdrus's name.
The number 65 indicated that it was a secret broadcasting station, with
the task of jamming foreign radio broadcasts. There were four such
broadcasting stations in Estonia: nr. 602 in Tallinn, near Tõnismäe,
on Luha Street, which had 3 distinctive pronged masts (one of which
survives to this day); one in Tartu on Tiigi Street; and one in Pärnu.
I no longer remember their code numbers. In addition to these, Estonian
Radio's existing broadcasting stations could also be used for jamming.
Of the Sitsi broadcasting station, only the main building still exists.
Although we had been officially assigned to work there, for a whole month
we weren't permitted into the control room, which was the most secret
spot in that building. In the course of that month, the KGB checked out
our suitability for special assignments, as that kind of work was called
in those days. They obviously couldn't prove that we had committed any
anti-Soviet crimes, and we were finally allowed to start working.
It seems rather odd that a security check wasn't done until after we
were assigned to work there.
The jamming process itself was the following. The jamming of the Voice
of America, Radio Free Europe, etc. was not just done through the
aforementioned broadcasting stations. The whole process was much more
complicated. The headquarters was of course in Moscow.
This is how it functioned in Estonia: every Estonian jamming center
(Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu) consisted of two departments - a so-called
radio bureau and an objekt. The radio bureau was actually a monitoring
centre, where the VOA and other broadcasts were listened to round the
clock. When necessary, they gave the objekt (broadcasting station)
instructions to start jamming.
The objekts were the aforementioned broadcasting stations (65, 602, etc.),
which contained a wide assortment of short-, medium-, and long wave
transmitting equipment.
The Tallinn radio bureau was located at 12 Kreutzwaldi Street, on the III
floor of the Ministry of Communications building. On every table there
was a large Russian Krot type shortwave receiver equipped with a
sensitive panoramic oscillograph. At every receiver sat a female Russian
operator, wearing headphones. There was also one medium- and long wave
receiver, which was used only occasionally. In the radio bureau they had
the broadcasting schedules of the Estonian and Russian programs of VOA,
RFE, etc. These were listened to constantly, and when necessary, the
objekts were told to turn on their jammers.
(CONTINUED IN PART 2)...
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