The Duga Radar The Secret Spying Soviet Radar Next To Chernobyl

In July 1976, radio operators worldwide were mystified by an eerie, relentless signal: the Russian Woodpecker. Explore the Cold War intrigue and conspiracy theories surrounding this over-the-horizon radar.

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[jasonwomack]

Plot twist: the ruskies were just trying to snag the satellite signal for the Playboy channel.

[Crissy_the_wonder]

"Turn people into mindless zombies"... social media has achieved that

[FliesFLL]

When I was 17 in 1983, an older neighbor had a garage sale and I bought for $10 a Zenith "Transoceanic" shortwave radio receiver. I put that thing in my bedroom and extended the antenna and I could listen to Radio Moscow, Radio Free Europe, and all sorts of other stations, especially at night.

One peculiarity about HF radios is that they work far better at night, when signals from the other side of the world can bounce off the ionosphere and reach your antenna. Also, when I used HF radios for communications over the Atlantic back when I flew 747-200's, I was told to use higher frequencies when the sun was high, and lower frequencies when the sun was low.

Back to the radio, which is from around 1949: One particular frequency had this weird "tick tick tick tick tick" sound, and I always wondered what that was all about. Someone else did a YT video on the Soviet "Woodpecker" over the pole early warning systems, so I already knew about these. The array has been used in movies, including "Divergent".

Great video!

[Hebdomad]

Amature radio enthusist here.

Calling cellphone signals "low frequencie" makes my head hurt. AM radio would have been a better example.

Cell phone signals are well above HF frequencies and exist very much in the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) range with 5g getting into the microwave bands.

Cell phone towers effectively work line of sight. There maybe buildings or trees in the way, but I garentee you cellphone tech is very much line of sight and works quite poorly if it's blocked by a mountain or too much stuff.

[Christoffer]

Shoutout to Shiey, who climbed Duga. Epic pictures when he's in one of those top gondolas.

[chaseweeks]

I've seen both Chernobyl and Duga up close and, honestly, Duga was far more impressive. I'm a little annoyed that you didn't go into the idea that the radar was intended to use the Doppler Effect to detect missile launches rather than direct observation. When radar hits an object moving away or towards the radar array, relatively speaking, the signal itself encounters a slight Doppler Shift, raising or lowering the frequency of the reflected radio signal. THAT's all they were looking for, just a slight shift in the reflected signal that would indicate ICBMs (very fast objects, launched toward the array and raising the frequency of the reflected radio signals) had been launched at the USSR. It was an incredibly simple and complex and genius idea.

[Plaprad]

Cool little radio wave tidbit I learned in the Air Force. One night we were out on the plane doing some work when one of our NCO's asked if I wanted to see something cool.

He set up HF, and transmitted a quick "Hi". A few seconds later, we heard a "Hi" come in.

That was the night I learned you can send an HF signal around the world if the conditions are right. Did it a few times to freak out the new guys. One actually thought he was talking to someone else and got mad they were just repeating him.

Good times. But radio is really cool when you dig into it.

[mrboom]

I was stationed in Berlin doing morse intercept in 76 77 78. That frickin thing drove us nuts. It covered a huge band of frequencies.

[IRUKANJI]

The Duga Radar, remembered fondly to a certain subset of the Internet Population as "The Brain Scorcher"

[woolenthreads]

The Duga Radar is a feature of the game "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl". In the game instead of being a Radar it is a transmission device to control the minds of combatants within "The Zone".

[grimace]

What Simon forgot to mention is that there’s a pack-a-punch machine up there.

[bingethinker]

The Russians were just finding a way to cook a Hot Pocket without part of it being frozen while part of it being lava hot.

[radiorob]

The Moscow Muffler, an ingenious device designed and sold by Advanced Electronic Applications (AEA) in Washington state was sold to radio Amateurs and shortwave listeners in the seventies and eighties. It attached to the loudspeaker output in the radio and would filter out the Russian Woodpecker. The Woodpecker would often make the shortwave bands utterly useless for communications without the Moscow Muffler filter.
Details of the Moscow Muffler can be found online. I just love the name of that old device.

[tonykeltsflorida]

In the early 80's when Shortwave in the USA was still in use, I heard the woodpecker a lot.

[MathiasGoated]

I just finished Chernobylite (a video game that prominently features the Duga radar) so this is nice to see! Thank you for this!!

[KieranOCarroll]

Good enough for government work Simon. As some commentators below pointed out, the script went off track a number of times when referring to specific frequency spectrum bands and propagation characteristics but fair is fair, you delivered a really interesting Megaprojects edition for those of us in the "Wireless" game. :) .... Slainte!

[longtabsigo]

I went thru the Special Operations Communications Sergeant school in the mid ‘80’s. We were trained deal with them by mitigating techniques, it was referred to Electronic Countermeasures. Unfortunately for me, I was later assigned to an organization that was tasked with dealing the OTHR in the Eastern Russia SSR. In other words, it was a “get to the target with all, let’s say, 24 dudes, then win a gunfight with 250-350 Strategic Rocket Forces and then put it out of commission for 24-72 hours. Yea, I wrote my first will at 19.

[Peterthethinker]

Just a note to the more inquisitive
MF is 300KHz to 3 MHz
HF is 3-30 MHz
VHF is 30-300 MHz
UHF is 300 to 3000 MHz [3 GHZ]

It's generally agreed amongst amateur radio operators and electrical engineers approximately 30 MHz depending on conditions is where things go between bounce off the ionosphere and things go right out into space. This is callled the MUF . Or maximum usable frequency.

The MUF can on rare occasions go all the way up into the 2-meter band aprox 146 MHz or so.

[rinrat]

I worked on enviro assessment of an arctic (Baffin Island) DEW line site. Banks of vacuum tubes frozen in ice in the buildings, transcripts of intercepted radio calls (Koren war firefights) in landfills. The endless efforts to listen in and/or prevent intelligence gathering and radar are fascinating.

[gamersunite]

Reminds me to watch ringway Manchester