The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming???

This is a title from a movie comedy made in 1966 depicting the accidental grounding of a Russian submarine off of a New England Island during the height of the cold war between Russia and the United States.  The movie was not shot on the east coast of the United States but actually filmed on the west coast, specifically the Mendocino coast of California.

What brings this movie and filming location to mind is an article that appeared in the Washington Free Beacon written by Bill Gertz with a dateline of July 22, 2015.  The title of the article is “Russian Bombers Flew Within 40 Miles of N. California Coast.

This reported security intrusion brings to mind the ongoing ham radio cooperation to lower their transmitter power levels in the 420-450 MHz band and protect the operations of the United States Air Force Solid State Phased Array Radar System (SSPARS) located at Beale AFB near Marysville, California.

Aerial view of SSPARS

Aerial view of SSPARS

To punctuate the importance of the Washington Free Beacon article, SSPARS and our national security concerns please take a look at the below photo I took of a beautiful sunset as seen from the Sacramento area on July 21, 2015 in the direction of the Mendocino Coast.  Notice the aircraft contrail on the right side coming out of the Pacific and then exiting back out on the left side back out over the Pacific.  You can make your own guess as to what was happening…

Beautiful sunset with a most interesting aircraft contrail.

Beautiful sunset with a most interesting aircraft contrail.