Duga

The Grids Longsleeve Tee is inspired by the Duga radar which was an over-the-horizon (OTH) radar system used in the Soviet Union as part of their early-warning radar system for missile defense. Duga also stands for arc or curve in Russian.

The Duga system is given the nickname the “Russian Woodpecker” by shortwave listeners as it emulated random soundwaves that resembled the sounds of sharp and repetitive tapping noises. During these random emissions, it often interfered with legitimate broadcasts, radio operations, aviation communications and utility transmissions. Therefore this resulted in tons of complaints by many countries worldwide.
Birth of the Duga

Through the 1960s, the Soviets had been working on early-warning radar systems for their anti-ballistic missile systems. Built just outside of Mykolaiv in Ukraine, Duga was the first experimental system that was successful in detecting rocket launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 2500km. The prototype Duga followed thereafter which was able to track launches from far east and submarines in the Pacific Ocean. 

Theories

These random sound waves emitted by Duga led to a rise in speculations and theories such as Soviet Brainwashing and weather modification experiments. Others speculated that it served to jam western broadcasts to submarine communications but over time, these broadcast jamming theories were discarded when a monitoring survey showed that Radio Moscow and other pro-Soviet stations were just as badly affected by the woodpecker interference as Western Stations.

Attempts to Jam Duga

In combating the interference caused by Duga, many amateur radio operators attempted to jam the signal by transmitting synchronised unmodulated continuous wave signals at the same pulse rate as that of Duga. These operators even formed a club called The Russian Woodpecker Hunting Club.

Signal Fading

Overtime, the signals became less frequent and in 1989, they disappeared. Reasons could be associated with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s or the success of the US-KS early-warning satellites which began services in early 1980s and by this time had grown into a complete network.

As of today, the radar is permanently disabled and will probably not receive any future maintenance because such arrangements were not discussed within Russian and Ukrainian talks. Most of the antenna still stands and is often used by radio amateurs who visit the area using their own portable radio equipment.