When I first arrived at Shemya to be a crew commander for the Cobra Dane radar, I half expected the ground in front of the array face to be covered with dead birds. After all, the Dane is a 16 megawatt radar and the array face is only about 100 feet across. You'd think the seagulls would've been popping like popcorn. It turns out that wasn't the case. The Raytheon contractors told me that the beams weren't set to focus until many miles in front of the face, so the energy density was too low to harm the birds. Still, we were told not to linger nearby and even had a checklist to practice shutting down the radar quickly in case someone got trapped in front of the face. It never happened (the Dane was built near the edge of a cliff, so you would've had to work at it to get trapped there), so someone must've just been covering his ass.

Shemya: Good job. Lousy location.

Don't let the blue skies in the pictures fool you. Only an idiot would've been out taking pictures on most days when the weather just plain sucked. Man, seeing the Cobra Den empty and forelorn like that is sad. That was one of the few good things there - drinking, bat hanging, playing crud (a violent game even if you aren't playing the full contact version), and having a cookout. The sign on the door said it all: "You are now leaving Shemya. Enjoy yourself!"