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- Few people realize in these days when satellite dishes
are found on every other rooftop that, back in the early sixties somewhere
in the hilltops near the northern italian city of Turin, two young italian
brothers were prying into the most guarded secrets of the mighty Soviet
Union. The space race was in full swing, providing the battleground for
a vital propaganda confrontation between East and West, in the midst of
the cold war.
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- The Judica-Cordiglia brothers, sons of one of Europe's
foremost pathologists, set up a listening post which probed the cosmos
and successfully tracked all the early american and soviet unmanned satellites.
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- The geographical location of their station proved particularly
suitable for the reception of soviet space vehicles, which regularly overflew
Northern Italy during their approach to the soviet tracking centers in
the Caucasus.
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- Using an array of advanced equipment, the two young italians
soon learned which radio frequencies to monitor and how to predict the
overfly times of the various space probes.
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- One day in early 1961, weeks before Yuri Gagarin's epic
space flight, instead of the usual beeping tones which they had become
accustomed to hear, they were startled by a sound which signaled a new
chapter in the history of mankind: there, in the listening center of "Torre
Bert", these two young students heard, clearly and unequivocally,
the beat of a failing heart and the last gasping breaths of a dying cosmonaut.
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- The incredible, disturbing real-life events which are
presented on this site are being uncovered for the first time outside the
restricted community of 'insiders' who have, for reasons unknown, decided
to protect the secrecy of the Soviet Establishment.
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- Read on, everything you will find is true.
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- *Torre Bert as featured in the April 1965 issue of
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- *Radio Moscow communiqué about the Judica Cordiglia
brothers.
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- *Golem in RealAudio! A RAI RADIOUNO Radio Broadcast directed
by Gianluca Nicoletti April 6, 1999
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- *An interview with Gian Battista Judica Cordiglia
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- 1999 - All rights reserved
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- *****
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- Source: http://www.areacom.it/html/arte_cultura/lostcosmo/readers.htm
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- *****
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- The following article was originally published in the
April 1965 issue of Reader's Digest
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- ITALY'S AMAZING AMATEUR SPACE WATCHERS By J. D. Ratcliff
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- With homemade electronic equipment, two young Italians
are keeping tabs on Russian satellites and making some startling discoveries
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- *
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- There is an eerie possibility that a long-dead Russian
astronaut is today hurtling silently through space at thousands of miles
an hour - the victim of a Soviet space shot that went wrong. His body perfectly
preserved by intense cold, he may be a lonely wanderer in space for centuries
to come.
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- Evidence that such a macabre voyager may exist comes
from an exciting new band of hobbyists: amateur space watchers. Like the
early ham-radio operators, these talented enthusiasts build their own equipment,
often creating for a few hundred dollars - out of such cast - off junk
as chicken wire, used pipe, second hand radios - instruments that would
cost a government hundreds of thousands. Their eavesdropping on astronauts
and their satellite - tracking achievements are impressive even to professionals.
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- Of the many amateur tracking stations now scattered over
the earth, one of the most striking and complete is located in the peaceful
little village of San Maurizio Canavese, 12 miles outside Turin, Italy.
Although much of the equipment is either homemade or dates back to World
War II, it looks thoroughly efficient. Inexpensive kitchen clocks on the
wall give Greenwich Mean Time, local time in Moscow, Cape Kennedy and Turin.
Operators wear white lab coats. The tracking console faithfully copies
the one at Cape Kennedy - ingeniously modeled after photographs and scaled
down to one fifth size.
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- The builders of this remarkable station are two brothers,
Achille and Gian Battista Judica - Cordiglia. They got interested in radio
as a hobby in 1949 while living at Erba, near Lake Como. Achille was 16,
Gian only 10. When they tried to wheedle funds from their physician father
to build a shortwave station, he reacted as most fathers would - "Don't
waste time when you should be studying." They had better luck with
their mother. The U. S. military was then selling off surplus radio equipment
at the knockdown price of five cents a pound. The boys bought 300 pounds.
After rebuilding it to their own needs, they were soon conversing in code
with newfound friends the world over.
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- In 1959 the family moved to Turin. Satellite launchings
had begun, and the boys were fascinated. "There was a new world out
there," says Gian, "and we wanted to be a part of it." They
decided to concentrate on Soviet rather than U. S. space efforts, because
Russia was closer, and because the Russians were secretive, never publicizing
shots in full technical detail as the United States does. They installed
crude listening equipment in an old World War II German bunker, and shivered
through the winter of 1960-61 while they perfected their apparatus. Achille
spared all the time he could from medical school; Gian signed up for a
correspondence course in engineering, so he could study at the station
with his headphones on.
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- Better quarters came the next year when their father
took over a convalescent home in a rambling 16th - century villa at San
Maurizio Canavese. Now the boys christened their station Torre Bert (Torre
for tower, Bert for Villa Bertalazona, the original name of the convalescent
home). They already had a number of striking achievements to their credit.
They could listen to conversations between astronauts and ground stations
for a few fleeting seconds as the space vehicles passed over Turin. But
they wanted to listen longer and to be able to track satellites. This meant
they must have a "movable dish" antenna, which could follow objects
across the sky and scoop up even the faintest electronic signals from space.
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- Governments spend millions for such things installed
in elaborate layouts - Britain spent $4,500,000 at Jodrell Bank, the U.
S. Air Force 15 million at Tyngsboro, Mass. A Turin contractor offered
to build a dish antenna for $3200. The boys checked their Torre Bert bank
balance - $30. The only solution, of course, was one they had become accustomed
to: build their own.
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- From junkyards they came back with pipe for the antenna
framework, an auto steering wheel that could be used to turn it, and truck
bearings to carry the ton - and - a - half contrivance. With extraordinary
ingenuity they built other equipment: a 4 - by - 12 foot screen that would
light up to show the position of a satellite at any given moment; a second
screen to follow moon shots; a listening console with three secondhand
recorders to tape messages from satellites. In sum, it was a remarkably
faithful model of the tracking control room at Cape Kennedy, the far off
wonderland of their dreams.
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- Lacking a library or funds to buy technical journals,
the young space watchers had to invent much equipment already in existence,
but about which they knew nothing. One example was a filtering device to
screen out unwanted noises coming in from space. They also developed methods
of determining whether a signal came from the ground or from a moving vehicle.
But one of their biggest achievements, which required superb detective
work, was determining the frequencies of Russian tracking stations. At
present they know the frequencies of six of them and can tune in at will.
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- As their station grew in complexity, it became clear
to Gian and Achille that help would be needed for its operation. Fifteen
space enthusiasts, mostly in their early 20's, were recruited. The boys'
sister, Maria Theresa, a pert and pretty teen - ager, got one of the most
difficult assignments. She was to learn Russian so she could translate
messages from manned Soviet flights. She is now fluent in the language.
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- Next, the boys wanted to organize electronic coverage
of the entire earth. Gian's fiancée, Laura Furbatto, was given the
job of enlisting other amateur space watchers scattered around the world
- from Tahiti in the Pacific, to Angola in Africa, to Argentina in South
America. Thus the 17 - station Zeus amateur network was born, hooked together
by shortwave radio. Now, when the operators of the little Italian station
discover that the Russians are going through a pre - launch rehearsal,
they alert the other Zeus stations so that they can be ready to start tracking
when the time comes.
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- Normally on a 12-hour schedule, Torre Bert goes on 24
- hour alert when Soviet ground stations become active. Every team member
has his assigned post: two men monitor voices and signals and make tape
recordings; two work the dish antenna; and one of the most talented members
of the team, a math wizard, operates a hand - cranked calculating machine
to figure speed and orbital path. (Professionals use electronic computers.)
The team's accuracy is such that they were able to predict, 12 hours in
advance, that Russia's Lunik IV would miss the moon by 5000 miles. The
actual miss: 5281 miles.
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- Most man-carrying satellites circle the earth in 90 to
120 minutes. By the time the second orbit begins, the busy little station
has already calculated its basic tracking information, and the screen on
the wall lights up, showing minute to minute location.
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- In its short span of life, Torre Bert has plucked some
remarkable messages from space. On November 28, 1960, for example, there
was the cryptic message: "SOS to the entire world." It came from
a moving space vehicle and was repeated three times. Amateurs in Texas
and Germany picked up the same message. Three days later Russia admitted
a launch which had ended in failure - but did not mention a man aboard.
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- On May 17, 1961, the voices of two men and a woman were
heard in desperate conversation - "Conditions growing worse why don't
you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about
us . . . Then silence. The same words were picked up in Alaska and Sweden.
Their meaning? No one will know until the Russians choose to talk.
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- Perhaps the most moving message of all was a wordless
one made early in February 1961. Tapes, which I myself heard at Torre Bert,
recorded the racing beat of an over - exerted heart (the hearts of all
astronauts are monitored automatically) and sounds of labored breathing.
The Judica - Cordiglia brothers took the tapes to famed heart surgeon Dr.
A. M. Dogliotti. His verdict: "This is the heart of a dying man."
The brothers are firmly convinced that the Russians have spent freely of
human life to achieve their space successes. Accumulated evidence indicates
that there may have been at least ten deaths.
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- The young men of Turin spent a long time admiring the
U.S. space program from a distance before they finally got an opportunity
to see it last year. Italian TV put on a space-quiz program with a $3000
prize. The Judica - Cordiglia brothers won in a walk and promptly bought
plane tickets for America. Visiting space centers in Alabama, Florida,
Maryland and Texas, they deeply impressed American space scientists. "They
have done a remarkable job," says Harry J. Goett, director of the
Goddard Space Flight Center. At Cape Kennedy the brothers played tapes
they had made of John Glenn's conversations with the ground. Professional
spacemen were mystified. The United States never announces radio frequencies
until after a flight for fear of causing traffic congestion on the particular
wavelength. How had the boys determined this one? Easy, the Judica - Cordiglias
said; they had seen a pre - flight picture of the Glenn capsule and had
figured the frequency from the size of the capsule's antenna!
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- The future? The busy little tracking station will be
only a hobby for Achille, who now has his medical degree and hopes to specialize
in space medicine. But for Gian, a hobby has become a career. "The
further you go with this, the stronger is the urge to continue," he
says. He hopes for a job offer from the United States. Meanwhile, he and
his fellow space watchers around the globe are keeping their eyes on the
sky and providing the scientific world with its most striking example of
amateur ingenuity.
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- ____________
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