BARS 103

It’s only a week before we will take off on the Moldova trip. There’s a lot we will see, and one of the site is the Warsaw Pact Troposcatter radio station, BARS 103.

Close to the Slovikan border, we will ride to the summit of Polonyna Runa, where we will check out the BARS 103. BARS is short for “Brone Avtonomnaya Radio Sistema” in the Latin alphabet (БАРС – Броне Автономная Радио Система in the Cyrillic alphabet).

A Troposcatter radio system is a system that uses the tropospherical scattering mechanism to allow microwave to communicate a lot longer that the normal “line of sight” systems. It uses the troposphere to bounce the radio waves back down on the ground.

The BARS 103 site – actually the entire BARS system is shut down. Troposcattering were replaces in the 1970’s by communication satellites.

Check out the Moldoiva trip plan here. More information on Ukraine is found here.

If you want to know more about Troposcatter, check the Wikipedia site. There’s even a US Army Staff Film report that has some information.

Featured image copyright slobobdsky. No copyright infringement intended.