The Times Leader from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania • 20

TIMES LEADER www.timesleader.com PAGE 4B SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13. 2005 VIEWS' OUTPOST which also are UHF. The fix was easy. They replaced the tuner and isolated housing power from tech power. No more jamming." While the Air Force described the site as "picturesque" and touted the activities available both on- and off-base, Beaton, who now lives in Jefferson, N.H., said that was true only in the summer.

"In the winter was the worst It could get pretty lonely as it was treacherous going up and down Red Rock Mountain." Some comfort could be found at the NCO Club in the special services building, which contained a small gym, game tables. tigate jamming of the radar signal, which was thought to be impossible. "Most every morning, for about one-half hour, the scopes would light up like light bulbs," Garber recalled. "No way could a target be picked out of all the light when this occurred." The FBI questioned drivers along Route 487, which passed outside the station, and Federal Communications Commission staff brought direction-finding equipment. Eventually the cause turned" out to be a bad UHF tuner in a television set in the housing area, Garber said.

"The lady of the house sometimes watched a soap on one of the local channels, Force designation) in the early 1960s as a radar maintenance technician. When he arrived, a new ANFPS-35 radar was being installed atop a five-story structure that still stands, while two; "height-finder" radars also were operating. Two outlying "gap filler" sites, needed because of the region's hilly terrain, fed data into the station's computer. "These sites were not manned and could be remotely controlled from P-30," Gather said. Part of his job was to maintain and calibrate the equipment, one at Ulysses near the New York border in Potter County and the other at Joliett, southwest of Potts- ban Missile Crisis.

"That was the only time I was at P-30 when both the inner gate and the outer gates were closed," Garber said. "It was a time when a lot of us thought World War was on its way. There was only one more upgrade to the DEFCON rating, and the war was on." DEFCON is military shorthand for defense condition and is numbered to indicate the degree of readiness for action counting down from 5 for normal to 1 for maximum readiness. While it was powerful, the FPS-35 was not foolproof. Once, officials from the government and Sperry, the manufacturer, descended upon Red Rock to inves ville.

The new radar unit was one of the first of its kind to be deployed. Huge the antenna weighed 70 tons it was painted in a garish redwhite checkerboard pattern. It must have been quite a sight as it rotated five times a minute. "Your (station) was probably one of, if not the best, state-of-the-art installation anywhere in the Lower 48," Garber said. Garber, who now lives in Pe-kin, has many memories of his time at Red Rock, some funny and others frightening.

The scariest one comes from the fall of 1962, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were locked in a tense struggle now known as the Cu Continued from Page IB trol system. The SAGE system connected dozens of long-range radar stations to control centers by sending data over telephone lines. The heart of the command center was a powerful digital computer, the largest in existence. at the time, which processed the incoming information and then sent it back to tracking stations as images on cathode-ray tubes.

Raymond Garber Jr. was assigned to P-30 (the station's Air See OUTPOST, Page SB si Qiaiiisgiuifig Join our family for a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner Serving from 12 Noon to 8 p.m. Adults $22.95 Children under 12 $13.95 Our Readers Get All The Coupons! HmesLeader readers get all the coupons. lOldvl)irZzil Full Ala Carte Menu will also be available Call for details. S5 lHE WOODLANDS i Rt.315,WiIkes-Barre You Are Invited To See KIN.GSXON 9W aania Arriving a Tt at The New IJ 00 Kingston rirehouse 0:00 AM Bring The Children! Santa will have his sack full of sweet treats for all! KINGSTON 135 S.

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