PDA

View Full Version : The Demise of Playa de Pals !!!!



SHAKEN Not Stirred
04-10-2006, 10:34 AM
Thought this may be of some interest to a few of you……
Some good old “Cold War” stuff that we don’t think about these days…..
Anyway….Here’s the quick way to get rid of a bunch of communications towers….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZWWTRmOM28&feature=Recent&page=4&t=t&f=b_
The Demise of Playa de Pals Radio Liberty………One of the World's Great Shortwave Stations is Dismantled
A leading Spanish newspaper recently reported that the governments of Spain and the United States had reached a political agreement for the cancellation of the lease contract under which the U.S. government has maintained and operated the facilities of Radio Liberty at Playa de Pals.
The Spanish Senate approved a motion to dismantle the antennas and structures that occupy the 1-1/2 kilometers fronting the Pals beach. The City Council of the town of Pals declared that 90 percent of that terrain would be declared a "green area."
For more than 40 years, the Radio Liberty shortwave transmitters at Playa de Pals, on the Costa Brava in Spain, pumped out broadcasts of news and information around the clock to listeners in the former Soviet Union and people of that area who could understand Russian or one of the associated languages. Their targets included most of Central Asia via second hop.
The brainchild of the late Colonel S.Y. McGiffert, chief engineer of Radio Liberty, the site at Playa de Pals, about 75 miles north of Barcelona, was selected in the late 1950s after he and an engineering team investigated many kilometers of beachfront locations in Spain. It was chosen as the best possible spot for banging in a shortwave signal into the Soviet Union.
Later,
CJG
:)