Conelrad in Boston area

[Ric Werme]

KevinVahey recalled:
> What I remember about the test ( it had to be 1961 or 2 ) was the
> signal of the Conelrad station was very weak in Harvard Sq.

> Still how secret could the info be as the stations had to know in advance?

IIRC (and I was only 11 years old or so), my father told me that
the idea behind Conelrad was to keep shifting transmitters so that
the enemy wouldn't have time to get a fix one before things shifted
to the next.  The frequencies were far from secret - for a while
the Conelrad logo was on the AM dial at appropriate points so you knew
where to tune to before ducking and covering.

I think we heard one test, we were 25 miles East of Cleveland and the
signal wasn't very good most of the time.

The early AM/FM stereo tests were better, we had the main radio in the
living room and the Hallicrafters SW was in the next.  Then there were
od color illusion tests on B&W TV.  Those are rather weird, zero commercial
TV opportunity.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conelrad (transmissions were low
power) http://www.conelrad.com/ (not much about Conelrad).

 - Ric Werme

On 11/21/07, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:
> > True, that.  I knew a lot about the history of Conelrad, but us mere
> > mortals were not told much more than what frequencies (640 and 1240
> > iirc) to tune to in case of an enemy attack...