Photography Links
10 Mesmerizing Time-Lapse Videos
http://www.wired.com
Awkward Family Vacation Photos
http://www.msnbc.msn.com
DigiLomo Camera
http://www.unplggd.com
Add comment January 4th, 2012
Architecture Links
The Earthscraper
http://www.archdaily.com
Jaffa Apartment
http://www.thecoolist.com
A City on Rails
http://gizmodo.com
Sofia and Varna Air Traffic Control
http://www.airliners.net
Add comment November 19th, 2011
Cold War Links
Better Homes & Bunkers
http://observatory.designobserver.com
Swiss Weigh Future Role of Bunkers
http://www.nytimes.com
Bunker-42 in Taganka
http://englishrussia.com
In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie
http://www.wired.com
1 comment October 8th, 2011
Remembering the Scotts Mills Quake of ‘93
With the (sort of) recent earthquake in Virginia, I was reminded of our last significant trembler here in Oregon, the Scotts Mills (or “Spring Break”) quake of March 25th, 1993 with a registered magnitude of 5.6. It was my junior year of college and our private school observed spring break a week before the public schools. I happened to be extremely sick at the time, so when the rumbling started in the early hours (5:34 AM to be exact), I remained in bed. Really, the shaking didn’t last all that long — I’m guessing just 10 seconds. It sounded like a freight train was passing by my window though. I had one of those cheap chipboard shelves in my dorm room and had a TV sitting it. I really freaked me out to see it swaying dangerously back and forth. Overall, the quake did little damage and there were no serious injuries. In Salem, the State Capitol building needed repairs due to some cracks in the wall of the rotunda. There was a bridge in McMinnville that was damaged and an elementary school that had to be condemned. In total, FEMA reported 16 residences and 54 businesses sustained major damage. There are no known faults in the Scott Mills area; however the Mt. Angel fault is not far away. As a side note, while I was researching a history project in college I came across in article from the late 1890s about strange geological occurrences in Scotts Mills — something like liquefied sand spurting from the ground. Not sure if this might be related to a fault line in the area, but it made me wonder about the unknown dangers lurking under that part of the Willamette Valley.
The only other time I experienced a significant earthquake was in 2001, when the office building I was working in shook pretty hard from a quake in Washington. That quake was probably more like the one folks experienced out on the East Coast.
Add comment September 14th, 2011
Visiting the Former West Coast OTH-B Radar
On a recent trip to central Oregon I made a detour to Christmas Valley to visit the former Over-the-Horizon Backscatter (OTH-B) radar site — one of the last Cold War installations in Oregon. This first required permission from the US Bureau of Land Management and the Oregon Military Department, who were kind enough to allow me to explore the site. Most Oregonians have probably never heard about the AN/FPS-118 (the official Air Force designation) radar installation in Christmas Valley. The system actually had three components: the transmitter site here in Oregon, a receiver site in Tule Lake California, and an operations center at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. All three sites were connected by satellite. A similar OTH-B radar existed in Maine to serve the East Coast. At the Oregon site, there are really three separate radar installations arranged in a sort of half-moon pattern facing west. Each has wood fencing surrounding the massive 460 acre perimeter and cyclone fencing around a power station, water tank, and the lone pole-barn style building. The operation center in Mountain Home processed all the data from the three West Coast radars. If something looked suspicious, interceptor aircraft would be dispatched to in investigate.
Funding for the West Coast site was authorized by Congress between 1986 and 1988. Construction was completed in December of 1990 at a cost of over $300 million. In 1991, plans were on track to turn the West Coast site over to the Air Force’s Tactical Air Command for official operation. However, with the ending of the Cold War, the Air Force decided to end activities at both the East and West Coast OTH-B radar sites and both were placed into caretaker status. In the mid ‘90s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began using data from the Navy’s smaller and portable OTH-B radar system (AN/TPS-71). The Air Force operated the West Coast site system briefly around this time for scientific and counter narcotics purposes, but this activity stopped in 1997 due to high operating costs. Again, the system was mothballed.
So how is OTH-B radar different from conventional radar? Well, conventional radar has always been limited in range due to the curvature of the earth. OTH-B radar gets around this problem by bouncing radio signals off the ionosphere. A small part of the signal is then reflects back to the receiver, which is called “backscatter”. The range of the OTH-B radar is anywhere from 500 to 1,800 nautical miles, much further than the conventional 250 mile maximum range of a rotating radar. The one major disadvantage of both the West and East Coast sites was the fixed 60 degree coverage. In contrast, a conventional rotating radar provides a 360 degree coverage. The Soviets also had their own OTH-B radar about a decade earlier than ours and was nicknamed the “Russian Woodpecker” by shortwave radio operators. It was shut-down around 1989, possibly because it interfered with civilian radio transmissions. Currently, the only large-scale fixed OTH-B radar site is in Australia.
The Oregon site sat unused from 1997 to 2007. Metal thieves took their toll as the price for metals soared during the economic boom years. In 2007 an Oregon State Trooper pulled over Peter and Andry Sharipoff of Mount Angel who were carrying 1,500 of copper wire stolen from the site. Both, not surprisingly, were also charged with meth possession. The Air Force dismantled the massive radar arrays shortly thereafter. In 2008, Lake County began exploring ways to use the site for alternative energy production. Since power transmission lines still exist at the site, the thinking was it would be easy to install solar arrays and push power out from the three sites. As of 2011, there has been no alternative energy development at the site. The Oregon Air National Guard now uses the installation for training purposes, but there doesn’t seem to be any long term game plan for the 2,500 acres of land.
I didn’t see any activity when I visited this summer — although there were a few exterior lights on. The power station was buzzing, so juice is still flowing to the site. Overall, the buildings and fencing look to be in good shape. Of course the radar arrays are long gone, but you can still see the cement footings. I should be clear though; this is still a military site and should not be entered without permission from the Oregon Military Office and the Bureau of Land Management. I suspect there are still security systems in place around the remaining buildings, so trespassing would be a bad idea. If you would like to see the site, my suggestion is to view it from the well maintained gravel roads that ring the three installations. But there really isn’t that much to see, so I’m not sure it’s worth making a trek out to Christmas Valley unless you’re a hard-core fan of Cold War infrastructure.
Add comment September 10th, 2011
Tiki Review: Trader Vic’s PDX
It’s probably been a couple of years since I’ve posted a tiki review, but then again tiki joints are pretty few and far between. That makes it all the more amazing folks are opening new tiki establishments. For decades, Portland had a Trader Vic’s on Broadway in the space now occupied by El Gaucho. I believe that location finally called it quits in 1996, probably due to shifting tastes and a patron base that was continuing to move to the suburbs. Not sure why Trader Vic’s decided to open an outpost in a relatively small market like Portland, but I would like to believe it has something to do with our collective love of tiki here in Stumptown. I suspect the rationale probably had more to do with closely studied demographics though. The new Vic’s location is in the Pearl, ground zero for affluent NW retirees. Based on my observation from dinner at Vic’s PDX last night, the patron mix certainly did skew older, so their calculation are probably spot on.
So how’s the decor? It’s pretty awesome as one might expect. Lots of tikis of various sizes. Glass floats hanging from the ceiling. Just about every flat surface covered in bamboo. Tables all have tiki candle holders and tiki salt and pepper shakers. Even the menus are in the old Vic’s style. Of course the drinks are fantastic and numerous. The food is pretty spendy if you’re in the dining room, but the lounge offers cheaper, and smaller, dishes. The big advantage to being the dining room is the service, which awesome. It’s refreshing experiencing efficient and unobtrusive service in a Portland restaurant. This aspect will especially be appreciated by the older crowd, who undoubtedly are nostalgic for a time when service was more of a priority here in Portland. The food was, not surprisingly, good. Nothing shockingly adventurous and memorable, but it was exactly what one would expect from Trader Vic’s. I enjoyed the spareribs from the famous Vic’s Chinese Oven, but our Caesar salad was also really great. Entrees are crazy expensive, but that’s what you get for sitting in the dining room. Really, I imagine you’re paying a premium for the top-notch service. Overall, I’m super-excited Vic’s is back in Portland. I’ll probably be spending the next couple of years working my way through the cocktail menu.
Add comment August 12th, 2011
Visiting Yet Another Cold War Site
A couple of months ago I took a trip up to North Bend, WA to explore a former AUTOVON site from the Cold War era. AUTOVON, an abbreviation of Automatic Voice Network, was a military phone system built to operate under extreme conditions, like an atomic attack. AUTOVON was world wide and during its height of operation there were sites in the UK, Asia, Central America, and the Middle East. By the early 1990s, advances in digital technology and the end of the Cold War lead to the abandonment of AUTOVON and its replacement, the Defense Commercial Telecommunications Network (DCTN). The site I visited was a switching center — possibly the only one in the Pacific Northwest — and opened in November of 1970. Some AUTOVON switching centers were underground and hardened for nuclear attack. In the case of the North Bend AUTOVON site, everything is above ground, but it looks like it was designed to ride out a nuclear exchange between the superpowers. Why do I say that? Because when I went inside the building, there is a decontamination shower just past the steel blast doors. Also, there is still a massive fresh water tank in the mechanical room. I didn’t see any sleeping quarters, but those could have been removed when the site was sold decades ago. A kitchen and bathroom facilities are still intact though. All the switching equipment was removed years ago, so there wasn’t really much to see in the operations room.
During normal Cold War operations, 17 technicians would have worked around the clock to keep the switching equipment running. This particular site would have handled all military communications for Washington, Alaska, and Idaho (and probably Oregon as well). The site was built by the Cascade Autovon Company at a cost of four million dollars and was managed by a one Larmar Gaines, the white-shirted civilian featured in the photos below. Century Link was kind enough to allow me to tour the facility and they also provide scans of the photos below. I have no idea what the future of the building will be — I think Century Link is trying to sell it though.
1 comment July 22nd, 2011
Goodbye Space Shuttle
NASA’s Space Shuttle program has come to an end. I’m certainly feeling nostalgic already, but unlike a handful of thick-headed legislators from Florida and Texas, I feel the smart thing to do is cleanly end the program. In a previous post about NASA’s ’70s era space station Skylab, I mentioned that program was developed under the assumption a future Space Shuttle program would be able to service the station. This was all part of a grand NASA vision of space exploration that emerged during the ’70s. After the success of the Apollo program, NASA began to plan for the next phase of launching people into space, which included ambitious plans to put astronauts into long term orbit. Unfortunately, the Shuttle program suffered numerous delays in the ’70s and the Skylab program died before a working partnership could be developed. When the first Shuttle launched in 1981, it was unclear exactly what role it would be filling within a larger space program. At first, it seemed like the Shuttle could be used to put super secret spy satellites into orbit. But after the Challenger accident in 1986, the Air Force and the intelligence community decided they didn’t want to rely on the Shuttle, so they went back to launching on traditional rockets like the Delta. Without a major sponsor like the military, the Shuttle lacked a clear purpose. It failed to deliver on the promise of making cargo hauling cheaper, so commercial satellites continued to ride into space atop conventional, and unmanned, expendable rockets. Another failure of the program was safety. The Shuttle was not originally designed with a crew escape system, unlike all of the other space vehicles previously developed. While such a system probably would not have saved the crews of the Challenger and Columbia, it was a serious short coming that was never fully addressed. Finally, the cost of the Shuttle program was far more than anyone anticipated. The work required to make a Shuttle (and solid fuel boosters) ready for launch was crazy expensive.
Despite all the shortcoming of the Space Shuttle program, it marked a huge technical achievement for the United States. The complexity of all the systems that had to work together for a successful mission was really amazing and ultimately, I believe, made NASA a stronger agency. However, I think that for political reasons the Shuttle program was maintained for longer than it should have. We need to move forward with a newer, and simpler, manned space program. Even though I have trashed commercial ventures like Space-X, they have demonstrated a growing capacity to be able to step in and offer new cargo and crew launch options. I think the future of NASA’s manned space program should be all about diversity — in a decade I anticipate there will be a number of options for putting someone in orbit. It was a bad idea to rely on a single launch platform like the Shuttle, so I hope we move away from that model.
Add comment July 16th, 2011
Science Links
Meet the XB-70 Valkyrie
http://www.wired.com
Building Shuttle Atlantis
http://www.space.com
Tiny Rotary Engines Could Power Gadgets
http://www.wired.com
How an Airship Hangar Became a Water Park
http://gizmodo.com
Add comment July 9th, 2011
PARC Field Day on Kelly Butte
This last weekend I observed Portland Amateur Radio Club (PARC) conduct their annual field day at Kelly Butt in SE Portland – nearly on top of the old Cold War era Civil Defense Control Center. The members of PARC use field day as an opportunity to test their ham radio skills, which would be tapped if a catastrophic natural or man-made disaster occurred rendering first responder communication useless. During field day, the dozen or so ham operators at Kelly Butte compete with other amateur radio clubs in logging contacts. They start at low power, like 5 watts, and work their way up. Once a contact is logged, it’s sent to a national organization for verification.
I was mostly curious in exploring the remains of the Civil Defense Control Center, which I have blogged about in the past, but never seen in person. There is no way to actually gain access to the interior anymore, which didn’t surprise me, since I’ve heard stories from the past of homeless folks taking up residence when access was still possible. What was a little amazing was just how completely the City of Portland covered the entrance to the bunker. Untold tons of dirt and rock now cover the concrete facade, which featured a massive sliding steel door seen in the film “The Day Called X”. There is an escape hatch at the rear of the facility, and this was pretty easy to find, but the city has plugged the door with a big chunk of concrete. What amazed me was the all the vegetation that has grown up around the old structure. The top of the building is still roughly outlined by a small field, but the parking lot and entrance looks like it’s hundreds of years old.
1 comment June 28th, 2011