[excerpted from an email]
We had a major clean up fix up project to get a little pride in the tower and site back in 1978, so we put a lot of deck paint on the floor. I came in to be commander after the prior commander had failed an inspection and left early. The 35 tower was the reason for his failure. Morale was just above zero. The site was scheduled to close some time in the late 70`s, but was slipping by about 2 years and since it was to close all the people on the site were frozen ie nobody could leave and the closing date slipping was wonderful to help everyone`s attitude. Some people were out there 5-6 years when they really wanted to go on to other career assignments. It was bad. The IG team was due back for a reinspection about 90 days after I got there. Then 2 weeks before they came in the NCOIC of the 35 tower turned himself in to the alcohol abuse program. God it was a mess, but I must say it worked out. The Maint Officer, Lt Thomas, and I picked a new NCOIC, SGT Foy, and he did a good job. We pulled through and the 35 tower had a pretty good Operational Rate for the rest of the time. Sorry to get off on the personnel issues. But, one last issue. That NCO who turned himself in and I sent to the Alcohol program was a major feel good personnel issue for me. He came back after the 30 day Betty Ford type program at McGuire, stayed sober, and was an excellent NCO. He was promoted about a year later. His son later got a scholarship to UCLA and I was just so proud of him.
Back to the 35 tower. I think we got down to about 18-20 people in the 35 tower, and I think we were authorized over 30(36-38 rings a bell), but we were able to cut down to close to single shift maintenance ie just 2 guys on at night. The 35 required a lot of maintenance. I don`t remember what equipment was on which floor, but you should be able to tell which floor was the transmitter floor if you can find 2 screened in rooms. I think they were on the 3rd floor, southwest corner. That is where the high power transmitter tubes were. These were really hard to maintain, and it was a lucky day (when I was there) to get them to operate. The power from them was pretty high, but we normally ran without them by running on lower power which was still as high if not higher than other search radar. Yes, it was the low power mode that caused all the TV sets on site and some in town to go "zing" every 12 seconds. I could watch TV and tell if the 35 was not putting out sufficient power. I don`t remember the power numbers and since they may still be classified, I could not say if I did. I find all the radar beam mind control talk funny since we almost never ran on high power.
On the whole site we had about 120 people in 1978, but about 30 were civilians. I think the 120 number was about 10-20 short of authorized manning levels. Most of the civilians were in civil engineering, but we did have one electronics expert and I can`t remember where he worked (26 tower I think). He went to Hill to the Radar Eval Sq when the base closed. The 120 was when I first got there in `78. We slowly went down as enlistments were up and other actions, such as a couple of admin discharges. One guy got drunk and hit the 1st Sgt so we got rid of him. This was after he had gotten into a fight with another guy who was a real self defense expert. Guess who won?
To get to the GATR site, you had to go back toward town and then down the road that goes by the airport. I think it was before you get to the airport itself you turned off to the right (East). It is on the highest point on the north side of the island in that area, I believe. This is on the east side of Lake Montauk. The docks and town are on the west side. So you should see a building on the hill top and probably a couple of old antenna poles. We had to turn in a couple of transformers up there that had PCB in them. Just to CYA, I still have the receipt to show we got them off site. I think we did a real good job to clean up that type thing, unless there were things dumped there that we didn`t know about. I assure you we tried very hard.
Tom has a wonderful insight into these things so I hesitate to correct him, but the digital data only went offsite to Hancock in my day. It was not used with any of the on-site displays. It was used in the GPA-124 SIF system, but that was all. To even see that you had to go to a display on the FYQ-47 outside of the ops room but next to it. The search radar data was analog on the old UPA-35 scope and the height data was on the RHI (range height indicators). Tom was right on all the data flow issues and has history on the site before I got there that is a lot better than mine. The RHI was the only real operational function we had on site. Our main job was to keep the radars up and the data going to center. The Height Operator sat at a HRI scope which showed the radar beam going up and down at a fixed azmuth. He would center a marker on the target radar return and punch a button to send in the altitude of the target in digital form to the Center. Most of the time he sat there with very little to do. The height request would come down from center to him and he would make minor adjustments in azmuth. The center knew where the target was from the search data. The center (Q-7) would actually position the antenna to the direction of the target. If you think this is something you should have seen how the manual input system worked in Alaska... That is another story. (I was the Electonics Maintenance Officer at Murphy Dome in `76.) We did have a back up operational mission in the event we lost contact with center. We would broadcast target position in the blind hoping there were aircraft that would hear and intercept the targets. We had a couple of real good exercise missions doing this. That was called level 4. I don`t know what level 1,2,3 were but, I expect level 1 was all equipment up and operational.
On the ALRI, it was long since gone when I was there, but I believe it was located to the southeast of the radar towers about half way to the beach. There was a block building out there and several abondoned antenna poles. This is a guess on my part. It could have been out at the GATR site.