The Russian Duga Radar, also known as the Russian Woodpecker, was a Soviet over-the-horizon radar (OTH) system that operated from 1976 to 1989. The system was designed to detect missile launches from the United States, but it also unintentionally interfered with radio communication worldwide.

The Duga radar was a massive, over 150 meters tall and 500 meters wide, and was located near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. It consisted of two giant antennas, one for transmitting and the other for receiving, and was powered by a large electrical station nearby.

The Duga radar emitted a distinctive tapping sound, which earned it the nickname "Russian Woodpecker" among radio enthusiasts. The tapping sound was caused by the radar's pulsed transmissions, which were sent out in short bursts at a frequency of around 10 Hz.

The Duga radar was operational for only 13 years, but during that time, it caused significant interference with radio communications worldwide, including with commercial, military, and amateur radio bands. The exact nature and purpose of the system were shrouded in secrecy, and it was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that more information about the Duga radar became available to the public.

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AI Technical Trustability Update

While working on an update to my RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook project to add a couple calculators about FM sidebands (available soon). The good news is that AI provided excellent VBA code to generate a set of Bessel function plots. The bad news is when I asked for a table showing at which modulation indices sidebands 0 (carrier) through 5 vanish, none of the agents got it right. Some were really bad. The AI agents typically explain their reason and method correctly, then go on to produces bad results. Even after pointing out errors, subsequent results are still wrong. I do a lot of AI work and see this often, even with subscribing to professional versions. I ultimately generated the table myself. There is going to be a lot of inaccurate information out there based on unverified AI queries, so beware.

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