This is part of a series of nodes tentatively titled Sixteen Years Before The (Antenna) Mast: My Life In The Bush With SIGINT. The previous node in the series is ninety days in the bottle. Your understanding of what the heck is going on in here will be increased if you read Army Security Agency.
At this point, I'm going to indulge myself in a digression from what has been a linear account of my misadventures on active duty and talk a little bit about the equipment we used in the 331st ASA Company and other tactical electronic warfare units during the later stages of the Cold War.
The gear I spent most of my time with was the TRQ-32 TEAMMATE, which everyone referred to as the "Turkey 32". This was a intercept/DF set with four receivers, which could target HF and VHF frequencies, although it was most commonly used against VHF targets. The TRQ-32 also included a steerable H-Adcock DF antenna (suitable mainly for threatening/scaring off credulous soldiers & civilians who thought we had ion guns) and a more conventional DF loop antenna. Since the DF equipment was unreliable and cumbersome, we often didn't bother setting it up and relied instead on the whip antennas for intercept work. The radios, tape recorders and DF scope were installed in a crowded little electrical shelter plopped on the back of an M885 Dodge 5/4-ton pickup truck, which was grossly overloaded by the time all the personal gear had been thrown into the shelter and the generator trailer with its two five-kilowatt generators was attached. This same equipment mounted in a Beechcraft twin-engine airplane or EH-1X Huey helicopter was known as the ALQ-151 QUICKFIX, which if I recall correctly was the code name of the 330th ASA Company. TDY to the 330th was very much sought after, as the unit was based at Wiesbaden within easy commuting distance of the fleshpots of Frankfurt. I had some fun times as crewman on an EH-1X during my first year with the 523rd ASA in the Army Reserve.
I also spent a fair amount of time with the TLQ-4 FATJAM, which was a training device pressed into service as an expedient ECM system until the purpose-built TLQ-17 TRAFFICJAM came along a few years later. Mounted on an M-151 jeep, the FATJAM consisted of a standard VHF tactical radio, an SG-886 "noise box" signal generator, and a directional antenna mounted on a 4x4 wooden balk that replaced the front bumper. Unlike its larger, more powerful cousins, the FATJAM could be set up and torn down in about five minutes, less if you didn't bother with the directional antenna. Hardly any of us used the noise box, since you were a much more effective jammer if you just keyed the mike to drown out your victim. Mmmm, sweet radio operator tears. Years later, when I was serving with the 523rd ASA in Minnesota, I got to play with the TRAFFICJAM, whose main differences from its primitive ancestor were that it was built into a militarized Chevy Blazer and had a RACAL digital VHF radio instead of the old tactical radio.
One of the systems used by the divisional ASA/CEWI units was the MLQ-34 TACJAM system, an awesome VHF jammer mounted on the back of an M1015 tracked ammunition carrier. The M1015 had a 10-kilowatt generator under the equipment hut where the ammo normally would be, and along with the self-erecting log-periodic antenna, this made the TACJAM a veritable Cadillac among ECM/EW platforms. Classmates in the 108th MI who operated this beast routinely packed a small refrigerator and electric skillet when they went to the field so that they didn't have to wait for lukewarm rations to show up.
The TACJAM replaced the more venerable and crufty GLQ-3, which had originally been built in the 1950s as a vacuum tube-driven ECM system for the Navy. Legend held that the original amplifier tubes lasted far longer than the specification, which led to the supply being sold as surplus...about a year before all the tubes started failing. The amplifier tubes were hurriedly replaced with five drawers full of solid-state amplifiers of such sterling reliability that having more than two functional at once was a minor miracle. Unlike other jammers, the "Glick" did not have a directional antenna; it did its work with a six-foot mast antenna mounted on top of the hut.
Another primitive piece of Clay Age technology deployed by the 331st was the TLQ-15 HF jammer, which was one of the few pieces of equipment we had that was arguably more dangerous to the operators than to the enemy. Superficially similar to the GLQ-3 in that it had a six-foot mast on top of its hut, the TLQ-15 also had a counterpoise of 24 copper wires spread out in a rough circle around the vehicle. These had to be marked with engineer tape and/or concertina wire to keep unwary soldiers from stepping on them while the jammer was operating, because anyone doing so would have been fried to a crackly crunch by the 15 kilowatts of effective radiated power surging through the counterpoise en route to its target. One of our team chiefs claimed to have demonstrated this to some unbelieving team members at Fort Hood by throwing a bunny rabbit onto the counterpoise during exercises; said bunny allegedly exploded as its internal juices got heated to the boiling point in about ten seconds flat. Reddy Kilowatt is not always your friend, boys and girls.
The remaining item in the 331st's inventory was the MLQ-24 radar jammer. This was the odd man out, since it didn't work in the VHF frequency range or with voice signals; it was manned by a pair of disgruntled 98J radar interceptors who complained constantly about the system's abysmally short range (less than five kilometers) which made its use in combat against ground surveillance radars -much less air defense radars, its nominal targets - tantamount to suicide. Other sources of dissatisfaction were the two antenna masts on the Milky, which were hard-mounted to the equipment hut and had to be raised to a vertical position, then hand-cranked to the operational height. This was flatly impossible for anyone under six feet in height and lacking upper body strength; predictably, towards the end of my hitch with the 331st, we received a pair of 98Js who were not only female, but both about 4' 11" and not into weightlifting as a hobby. Their team chief was not amused.