Billy Laptop — "how was it you got so smart Billy?"

Trish: And how was it you got so smart Billy?

That is really interesting and also about the fencing for the antenna. Were you talking about how you had seen it used for helping with transmitting or receiving? And how would it be attached to the rest of the antenna setup?

BLT: Hi Trish, I guess this will be an introduction to the group too.

Well, my educational accomplishments are many. I received my first degree from the Brooklyn College of Brain Surgery where I also minored in tractor trailer driving. I then decided that it would be neat to be an attorney too. So I graduated from the Mickey Bitzko School of Law and became a malpractice attorney. For my first case I decided to sue myself and was successful. So that put an end to my medical career. However, I lost my license to practice law due to a conflict of interest, namely for suing myself.

That left me with my minor in tractor trailer driving. I wasn't too disappointed to be honest about that. My mother always told me to keep an ace in the hole. Besides, according to Einstein's theories of relativity (or intransigence as some may call it) regarding frames of reference in gravitational fields with accompanying various velocities, truck drivers live longer and that made it seem to be a plus for me. So it was with my truck driving degree that I wound up at the over the horizon facility in Maine. Unfortunately, even though I had a minor degree in tractor trailers, I forgot to get the license, so that terminated my vocational experience in that field as well.

I then applied to and was accepted by the University of Secaucus in the New Jersey swamplands outside of NYC, where many Soprano's associates have their final resting place and took up space. I was in a special program where I was able to determine my own curriculum. So I graduated from there with 3 majors, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner plus an extra 247 pounds in body mass.

Unfortunately the market for my newly acquired abilities were glutted (no pun intended) and I had to seek other forms of gainful employment. Given that I did have a medical background I decided to become a human test subject for the pharmaceutical industry. I figured if convicts can do it so could I. For 10 years I took every kind of drug imaginable. Normally the practice is to do blind and double blind testing with controls and variables carefully inter-digitated with placebos but I was a "real man" and got them to always give me the good stuff. Finally I gave that pursuit up when having to shave the palms of my hands and the balls of my feet daily got to be a bit too much.

By that time I realized I was becoming very intelligent and what better way than to become a journalist and share my knowledge with the masses. I applied to the University of Missouri School of Journalism, in Columbia, MO., which has the only condom lined creek running through it in the world, according to Al Capp who was the cartoonist for Lil Abner, but was rejected. I was courted by the New York Times but felt I would add too much credibility to their reporting and rejected the offer.

Feeling a bit discouraged I began to realize I did not need corporate media or institutional validation for any literary pursuit. I thereupon decided to become a ghost writer. I began pumping out doctoral dissertations for PhD candidates who enjoyed large family trust funds and who needed some wallpaper for a sense of accomplishment. It was a good business to be in, I got lots of Blue Chip referrals.

Finally I tired of that pursuit and sat down on a bench overlooking the Arizona meteor crater one day and asked myself "what do I really want to do?" I then had a flashback to my childhood to a B&W movie made in 1941 starring Joel McCrea called "Sullivan's Travels." It was the story of a Hollywood director who decides to go on the road to live the life of a hobo and learn for himself firsthand, what it was like to be a down and outer. The concept appealed to me. I liked the low overhead aspect.

I felt too that this pursuit would also open up my mind to cosmic questions like those Jean Shepherd K2ORS (SK) used to ponder on his WOR radio show many moons ago. I saw doorways opening up leading to more doorways and perhaps eventually leading to the discovery of the fundamental truths that have escaped man's grasp all these past millenia. Questions begetting more questions with answers ever so subtly eking out the true meaning of existence itself.

Alas one day I finally came to the greatest and toughest and the final question of all. The Holy Grail of all things infinite!! Finally I was having an epiphany. I found myself coming to the close of a long, long difficult journey and just within these past few moments did I finally arrive at the nearest I have ever been to Nirvana itself when the Greatest Question of all arose before me in the form of an ultimate interrogative and my mind cried out, Yes, Yes, this is it!!!

Alas however this question is totally beyond my comprehension and I'll never know the answer of Why to it and it is plainly this: Where did the yellow went, when I brushed my teeth with Pepsodent?!!!

My whole concept and understanding of biology and high energy particles streaming isotropically out into the universe from the galaxy has been undone. I am unable to equate rainbows with solar winds or convection cells on the sun with thunderheads on the earth. Are the radiative emanations from the core of the earth in part due to the breakdown of radioactive elements one and the same with the fusion of hydrogen into helium within the core of the sun? Oh woe is my understanding!! Is the sun yellow because of my teeth? Therefore, there are more questions than I can ever find answers for. Henceforth I find that I am only a mere mortal and some things I will never know or understand.

And so Trish, here I am exposed to all in this group witnessing my ignorance. If I can't answer the ultimate question, then I don't know anything at all.

Well, I think I'll go down to Joe's on PCH and get a double portion of plaque building bacon and eggs with those great home fries smothered in ketchup and start all over again.

In response to your second question, I was at the receiving site for the U.S. Air Force project in Columbia Falls main. The curtain antenna itself consisted of acres of stacked dipoles that had the phasing controlled so as to increase the overall gain of the curtain producing upwards to 20db of received signal at the classified design frequencies, though it was really a broadband antenna. There essentially was no physical connection (coupling) between the curtain and the ground plane which consisted of the fencing. The acres of fencing, acting as a mirror, gave an additional 3db boost to the forward receiving gain of the antenna. The result was many millivolts of effective gain for the diversity receivers which were designed to act as interferometers for determining the direction and location of the incoming signals.

Massive amounts of gain from the antenna was required to receive the echoes from thousands of miles away off the potentially rising plumes of rockets launching from various facilities in the Soviet Union should that scenario had occurred. Our transmitting antenna sent signals that could bounce off the changes in the atmosphere caused by the Soviet Union's IBM's rising into the atmosphere. Our transmitting ERP (effective radiative power) was many megawatts in strength to overcome the attenuation caused by propagation on both sides of the signal path.

The Soviets had a comparable system nicknamed the “Woodpecker” that looked at us from their homeland and they routinely sent signals our way on popular shortwave frequencies in the U.S. For them and for us it was a system of redundancy to complement spy satellites with infrared sensors.

As space technology increased on both sides, the land based over the horizon radar, as it was called then, was phased out. It went the same way as the yellow did from my Pepsodent.