[A5555]

White sands missile range museum. 909 twisted pairs.

I'm working on wiring. I stared at this display a long time.

 

[airguy]

Whoa - I gotta see that museum - where is it?

 

[Mile High Relic]

Whoa - I gotta see that museum - where is it?

In the basement of your local telephone company Central Office. Well, maybe not that exact display, but you could probably see some lead (as in Pb) splice cases.

 

[sbalmos]

Now imagine having to deal with that bundle if one wire happened to fray, split, or otherwise short somehow.

I think the closest bundle I've seen to that were some of the transmitter bundles feeding the antenna farms at the old VOA relay site up near us in West Chester.

 

[Bob Axsom]

The Mind Struggles to Imagine the Requirements

That area is also the home of the Trinity Site. The lead shielding suggests radiation shielding from without in an earlier time. 24 gage wire seems awfully small for the age of vacuum tube diodes and amplifiers though. Twisted pairs are used to cancel radiation from the individual circuit wires (pairs).

Bob Axsom

 

[A5555]

headache

I got a headache just looking at that bundle.

http://www.wsmr-history.org/

 

[Bob Axsom]

The Museum and Missile Park

Twice each year for one day only, the Trinity Site is open for tours (something like the first Saturday in April and October). If you fly into Alamogordo, NM you can get a rental car at the FBO for local driving and you can also sign up for a tour on a bus by contacting the Chamber of Commerce of the city. The tour takes you to the famous site of the first atomic bomb explosion, the building where "it" was prepped etc. and on the return trip it goes by the White Sands Missile Range Museum and stays for an hour or two. It is kind of interesting especially if you have some connection with the items on display as is always the case with aircraft and space museums - missiles have less personality so the connection is even more important to hold your interest. he Museum is openly accessible all the time in the town - not on base. It is a worthy tour destination.

Bob Axsom

 

[A5555]

V-2 Rocket

They have a beautiful full scale V-2 rocket cutaway on it side for viewing. That alone was worth the trip. The Americans grabbed the all the V-2 they could before the Russians arrived and shipped them back with some Germans. If I remember right a V-2 was launched at White Sands in 1946. That in itself is hard to believe.

The Germans have a German Air Force Base in Alamagordo. It is the largest German Air Force Training base in the world. When we passed thru Alamagordo the newspaper stated the Germans had been sued for not paying the American line help. They lost the suit and had to pay.