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KL7AJ
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It is with deep regret that we note the passing of HAARP a little over a year ago. Unless there is a "stay of execution" the HAARP facility in Gakona, Alaska will go under the wrecking ball. All the diagnostic instrumentation has already been re-deployed elsewhere; the fate of the actual heater transmitters is to be determined.
I was priviledged to have been involved in various capacities at both HAARP and at Hipas Observatory (the predecessor to HAARP) over a period of some twenty-five years. While both facilities had similarities, there were also some profound differences, as well. We actually did more different things at HIPAS than HAARP; we had a little more freedom to take side-trips from the main mission than HAARP did. But still, we did some very cool things at both sites.
I was "drafted" by Dr. Alfred Y. Wong, professor at the UCLA plasma lab to help construct HIPAS Observatory in the late 1980s. My only qualification was that I'd worked with high powered broadcast transmitters for over a decade at the time, and I was the only guy in Alaska who'd ever seen a vapor-phase cooled transmitter before. And the fact that I lived in Fairbanks, so I wasn't about to "bail out." Most of us involved actually volunteered to put HIPAS together; though a couple of staff members were sent up from UCLA on a part-time basis. But we knew we were on the verge of something unique and special.
HIPAS's transmitters were originally built in the mid 1960s, in Platteville, Colorado, one of the first sites to explore the Luxembourg Effect. That site had been decommissioned in the mid 70s I believe, and the eight 125,000 watt H.F. transmitters had been in storage at UCLA for most of the interim. Dr. Wong desired to continue where Platteville had left off, but in a much more desirable location...right under the Auroral oval, where the Earth's magnetic field lines were concentrated, and nearaly vertical, right through Fairbanks, Alaska.
I knew a lot about radio propagation, working with military H.F. radio systems, some shortwave broadcasting, and had been a radio amateur for a long time before this. But I knew nothing about the weird non-linear stuff that happens in the ionosphere...IF you have enough power. And this is what HIPAS had in abundance: one megawatt of raw R.F. power, and 17 dB of antenna gain...a total ERP of just under 100 million watts...aimed straight up.
The original antenna field for HIPAS looked like Stonehenge. It had eight crossed dipoles, seven around a circle and one in the middle, each mounted on a 40 foot Rohn tower. The circle was around 800 feet in diameter. Nine-inch coaxial hard-line transmission lines ran from the transmitter building across the field to the towers. From the air, it really looked like something alien...yet inviting.
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack...gh_Power_Auroral_Stimulation_Observatory.html
This link shows some of the few remaining photos of HIPAS. As we will explain later, we did a lot more than ionospheric heating...we had a world class LIDAR facility with a one of a kind liquid mirror...the largest ever built before or since. We also had an inductively coupled plasma device where we created the highest man-made temperature on Earth, outside of a nuclear detonation.
Stay tuned!
I was priviledged to have been involved in various capacities at both HAARP and at Hipas Observatory (the predecessor to HAARP) over a period of some twenty-five years. While both facilities had similarities, there were also some profound differences, as well. We actually did more different things at HIPAS than HAARP; we had a little more freedom to take side-trips from the main mission than HAARP did. But still, we did some very cool things at both sites.
I was "drafted" by Dr. Alfred Y. Wong, professor at the UCLA plasma lab to help construct HIPAS Observatory in the late 1980s. My only qualification was that I'd worked with high powered broadcast transmitters for over a decade at the time, and I was the only guy in Alaska who'd ever seen a vapor-phase cooled transmitter before. And the fact that I lived in Fairbanks, so I wasn't about to "bail out." Most of us involved actually volunteered to put HIPAS together; though a couple of staff members were sent up from UCLA on a part-time basis. But we knew we were on the verge of something unique and special.
HIPAS's transmitters were originally built in the mid 1960s, in Platteville, Colorado, one of the first sites to explore the Luxembourg Effect. That site had been decommissioned in the mid 70s I believe, and the eight 125,000 watt H.F. transmitters had been in storage at UCLA for most of the interim. Dr. Wong desired to continue where Platteville had left off, but in a much more desirable location...right under the Auroral oval, where the Earth's magnetic field lines were concentrated, and nearaly vertical, right through Fairbanks, Alaska.
I knew a lot about radio propagation, working with military H.F. radio systems, some shortwave broadcasting, and had been a radio amateur for a long time before this. But I knew nothing about the weird non-linear stuff that happens in the ionosphere...IF you have enough power. And this is what HIPAS had in abundance: one megawatt of raw R.F. power, and 17 dB of antenna gain...a total ERP of just under 100 million watts...aimed straight up.
The original antenna field for HIPAS looked like Stonehenge. It had eight crossed dipoles, seven around a circle and one in the middle, each mounted on a 40 foot Rohn tower. The circle was around 800 feet in diameter. Nine-inch coaxial hard-line transmission lines ran from the transmitter building across the field to the towers. From the air, it really looked like something alien...yet inviting.
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack...gh_Power_Auroral_Stimulation_Observatory.html
This link shows some of the few remaining photos of HIPAS. As we will explain later, we did a lot more than ionospheric heating...we had a world class LIDAR facility with a one of a kind liquid mirror...the largest ever built before or since. We also had an inductively coupled plasma device where we created the highest man-made temperature on Earth, outside of a nuclear detonation.
Stay tuned!