I occasionally think of what possible things might have been sent over this microwave radio. When I was in Germany in the army we had microwave telecomm links on the tops of hills to connect our hawk missile sites to our headquarters. We had the voice channels connected to our switchboard and if you were old enough to make a phone call back when all the telecomms was over analog microwave then you would understand that the channel could be really poor quality. There could be a lot of noise which could sound like a whole room of chipmunks chattering in the background. These noises were caused by the crosstalk between dozens of channels that were single sideband, frequency division multiplexed over the microwave links.
And the channel could sound hollow like you were listening through a long tube. Or the voice was very weak and far away so you had to shout loudly. None of this happens nowadays, I talk to friends more than a thousand miles away like they live down the street.
But then there were all the code names we had to use for the missile sites. Instead of the missile battery’s name, we had to call it by its codeword. We called our HQ cocktail, and other sites were called Chrysler, cat, Buick, and other odder names like stewed spasm or handsome ladder. Anything to obfuscate what or where we’re talking to. These silly sounding games were serious stuff that could get you in trouble if you didn’t obey the protocol.
Then there were the Top Secret Cryptographic machines that sent encrypted messages over the voice channels like warbling birds. There were telephone sets with encryption so all you heard were the whizzing and squealing of modems talking to each other.
I just think it would be very interesting if this microwave might have been used to link voice lines of some secret military sites hundreds of miles apart.
