AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
All the pixels, but without messing up your TV reception, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938/
Discussion
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@mattblaze Ooh - brings to mind one of mine @WiteWulf
This is a stitched imaged made from two shifted side-by-side captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens and a Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50) on a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right +/- 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
@mattblaze thanks for the details too. I was wondering how you managed to capture the whole building box and with this much detail. Beautiful shot and thought provoking write up…
@mattblaze Woah how big is that file? Im shootng 45mp with my Z9
@cvvhrn The stitched raw file is about 100GB. Definitely not something you want to edit on a phone.
From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four level (82 foot) monolith was the centerpiece of the "Almaden Air Force Station", a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD's SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the powerful radar signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It's unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in tracking incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers and other countermeasures. Fortunately, we never found out.
The huge rotating antenna (not shown) was removed shortly after the site's decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
@mattblaze I listened to an interview between #GradyBooch and Gergely Orosz, (that was pretty interesting) and Grady argues that SAGE was effectively the first of three golden ages of software engineering. An astounding amount of engineers and infrastructure was devoted to it.
Of course, Grady had thoughts on #AI.
I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they're artifacts of what was perhaps humanity's most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn't seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.
On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.
