I also volunteered at Ft. Monmouth during the 1st Gulf war operating their Army MARS station AAR2USI providing comms between deployed soldiers and their families stateside.
When Fort Monmouth shut down, the MARS station moved to Camp Evans. It's currently located in Building 9116, adjacent to the TLM-18
Well, I dunno... the dish has mechanical parts that are 40 years old. What condition were they in? Did they need to replace any motors or bearings or control electricals or build new interfaces to old obsolete ones? Did they have to do anti-corrosion measures, maybe even paint the thing? It may have been quite a project.
Yes, parts had to be replaced and rebuilt. The drives were replaced, the elevation assembly was re-manufactured, feeds were fabricated (one is recycled from another project), and, yes, it was painted.
Let's not ignore the highly effective job the Army did in de-militarizing the TLM-18. They removed or rendered inoperable the drive controls, pinned the antenna to prevent motion (required a cutting torch to free the mechanism) removed the control console, and striped off the feeds and feed lines. Think Lawn Ornament.....
From the tech perspective -The software and receiver are open source, the storage servers are all Linux. It's also crowd funded and has not accepted any government money.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
