Video Lecture on Absorption of the Atmosphere

White Alice Communications System on Anvil Mt in Nome, AK

Thanks to DEW, which scattered 58 different early detection systems across northern Canada, it became necessary to develop a reliable way to communicate with each site. This was White Alice, a communications network that used tropospheric scatter and microwave relay to link the far north.

Abandoned Radar Station - RAF Stenigot, Lincolnshire, England

After the invention of radar in the late 1930s, the UK built a string of early-detection systems along its coastline. A major hub in this "Chain Home" was the RAF Stenigot, in Lincolnshire. In the 1950s, the station was updated with tropospheric scatter dishes, which allowed the army to transit and receive microwave signals by beaming them through the troposphere-the lowest level of the Earth's atmosphere. They were eventually decommissioned in the 1980s, and today the abandoned dishes are used for everything from climbing to skateboarding.

Photo: DigiTaL~NomAd