Recording Russian Satellites

Sharing Stories

October 30, 2022 at 5:02 p.m.

Photo of Pete MacDoran as a teenager being visited by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. VALLEY NEWS AND GREEN SHEET, Van Nuys, California

...by Pete MacDoran

Recording Russian Satellites

I was thirteen years old in 1954, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted me an Amateur Radio (HAM) License, K6JCB. There was also a notice that radio signals were from a place I had never heard of—Viet Nam. I thought about that country, so far away. How could that event ever have anything to do with me? It was about to become an "isolated place of origin" which led to my adoption of a war-injured child.

It was then the fall of 1957, and I had mowed enough lawns to buy a reel-to-reel tape recorder to capture some of the rock and roll music from local radio station KFWB. It was about 10 pm, and I was listening to music that suddenly stopped, and a voice came on: “Dateline Moscow: The Soviet Union has just announced the launch of a second artificial Earth satellite that now carries a Russian dog named “LEICA.”

When the Russians had launched their Sputnik 1 satellite, I was not prepared to capture any technical data about new satellites. I guessed they would repeat the technical details of Sputnik 1 which transmitted on “20.005 Mega cycles.” I immediately setup my new tape-recorder and connected the receiver to the recorder and set to receive at 20.0 Mega cycles. I heard a repeated “sissing” sound and a deep tone that lasted about five minutes, and then it was gone.

The following afternoon, I was again listening to KFWB radio that was now repeating their request for anyone that might have a recording of the new Russian satellite. “If so, please phone our station.”

So, I called and played the weird sounds I had recorded. The KFWV radio engineer listened over the phone a few times and asked if I could bring that tape recording to the station.

My parents knew LA thoroughly, and we were soon with the station engineer. The engineer played my original tape several times through various audio filters. He said that he had a lot of practice from his World War 2 radio experience. He said he’d never encountered anything like this.
Radio station KFWB shared the recording with many other stations, and they always gave me credit for having captured this signal.

Many years later, I was at an international space conference between the US and the USSR, and we were encouraged just to wander around and introduce ourselves.

One of the senior Soviets smiled and said, “Oh, we know who you are.”

I was never quite sure how to interpret that greeting.

Pete MacDoran is a Washington resident and author of Amazon.com : The Old Men Will Die First: A True Story of Cold War Espionage.

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