My thoughts too Doc. Chernobyl went bang April 26 1986 while the DUGA-3 radar aka The Steelyard operated until November/December 1989.The Chernobyl plant was finally shut down in December 2000. Chernobyl itself had nothing to do with the demise of the DUGA-5 radar aka the "Woodpecker" even though it is within the 30 Km exclusion zone as it continued to operate for a few years.
From Wikipedia: "Although the reasons for the eventual shutdown of the Duga-3 systems have not been made public, the changing strategic balance with the end of the
Cold War in the late 1980s likely had a major part to play. Another factor was the success of the
US-KS early-warning satellites, which entered preliminary service in the early 1980s, and by this time had grown into a complete network. The satellite system provides immediate, direct and highly secure warnings, whereas any radar-based system is subject to jamming, and the effectiveness of OTH systems is also subject to atmospheric conditions."
I don't recall hearing it much after Chernobyl but you guys could be right, i assumed Chernobyl took it out as it took out about a 30 mile radius which is still to this day desolate and fish and wildlife don't last too long. i watched a programme about someone fishing in coolant pools, some big wells catfish, plenty pike and zander, but most die prematurely and growth rates are abnormal. he was hitting some radiation hotspots regular.
I have also heard off hams using it.
they had more than 1 OTHR and I would have had one but my Dad told me to fuck off, Same as he did when i wanted to put an Avanti monnraker 6 on roof, was one hell of a good antenna thats for sure,
but hey who needs that shit when you can have HAARP, fucking with weather, taking out icbm's and fuck knows what else its capable of, no doubt a piece of Tesla's missing/stolen by US government work, the patents make interesting reading as does who funds it.
talking of OTHR's, one night i was out around 99 i heard the strangest thing, it rose from next to nothing to a crescendo then dropped again,sounded like 2 tone signal, this was around 27.535,
i thought what the fuck is that, i followed it as it rose in frequency till i lost it high on 27 mhz,
I returned to 27.535 and it came back, this time i realised it wasn't a changing tone at all as i followed it slowly with kc shift, it was a sine wave that was rising in frequency, i can only assume an OTHR or similar ionospheric tester sweeping hf, would come back to 535 every 10-15 minutes or so, anyone hear this before?
outwith woodpecker and numbers stations weirdest thing i've heard on radio and no-one in uk has heard of it.
if i jumped 10 kc i could wait on it coming and would get same off frequency pitch till it hit centre frequency then started going high again. never heard or seen anything like it since.
I dread to think how much a rotator would be for it Donald, but certainly one of the most impressive antenna arrays i ever saw, I'd have had a Cobra 148 gtl dx and zetagi bv2001 in that fucker in a sec with no thought about radiation, the radiation off the antenna itself couldn't have been much less than Chernobyl anyway at 10 MW, lol.
Yeah Doc you got me, I slipped up, but when I do it a tenth as often as you do I'll start to worry, like how a swr meter works, or 9ft of coax being a 1/4 wave inverter at 27 Mhz. fuck I'd be here for at least a week listing your fuck ups
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and I would imagine Chernobyl may not have stopped it, but certainly wouldn't have been popular with anyone working there post Chernobyl, that's if the continued woodpecker even came from there and not one of their other sites, as accurate Soviet Union info is thin on the ground,
your military wasn't too clever at detecting the source,they had it narrowed down to the Ukraine, lol, Can land on the moon with flags that blow in the breeze and shadows that defy physics, a bit like most of your posts, but can't track a 10 MW transmitter with an antenna that beggars belief and a receiving one equally as big not that far from it. CIA, Central Imbecile Agency.
infact your hams had more success jamming it, ZERO. I bet you were one of them, lol