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By Miriam Raftery
Photo: Creative commons by Editor Brad
April 19, 2016 (Campo) – A quirky relic of East County’s past is now gone. Locals called the nest-shaped satellite dish the “Pterodactyl birdbath.”
Officially, the 60-foot-wide radio-telescope was part of the La Posta Astro-Geophyisical Observatory run by the Naval Electronics Laboratory in Campo at the base of the Laguna Mountains in San Diego’s East County.
Also known as the La Posta Microwave Space Relay Station, the observatory played a key role in Apollo space launches, providing ionospheric forecasting to predict solar activity that could hamper communications from the ground to the space capsules carrying the first astronauts to the moon.
It measured environmental disturbances and provided solar radio mapping, also playing a role in development of a solar optical videometer for microwave research.
A building below the dish housed a turbine-powered alternator to power the dish operation, since there was not enough power available then from the national grid. An operator controlled the dish by computer from inside the building, monitoring its movements by closed circuit television.
In 1986, the observatory was officially decommissioned and the surrounding site converted for use as a Naval Weapons Training Facility, but the large satellite dish remained, an odd local landmark looming high for decades.
In November of last year, dismantling of the satellite dish began and by early this year, it was gone, relegated to the pages of history and the memories of local residents.
Tim Cass, a long-time East County resident, tipped us off to this fascinating bit of history, remarking wistfully, “Quite a site, gone from view.”
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