Five weeks later, on 19 May 1961, the brothers picked up what is now their most infamous recording, which they claim is of a woman cosmonaut whose ship burned up on re-entry. Then, a few days after this, they picked up a tantalising few seconds of another transmission: “Conditions growing worse, why don’t you answer?” Both recordings are clear and accurately translated.
TORRE BERT
The brothers got permission to take over a disused German bunker on the outskirts of Turin at a place called Torre Bert. Reclaiming all the scrap metal and old pipes they could find, they enlisted the help of a dozen student volunteers and constructed a series of antennæ, eventually creating a super-dish with a diameter of 15m (50ft) and weighing one and a half tonnes.
The brothers stuck a sign on the bunker wall: Torre Bert Space Centre. Inside, using discarded WWII American army equipment, they created an exact replica of Cape Canaveral, including an enormous map of the world behind a Perspex sheet along with an LED display that marked satellites’ progress.
ping
“...LED display...”
Why should a Fortean Times writer be any more technically savvy than one at the Washington Post or New York Times?
I’ve subscribed to FT for many years and some of what they publish is good, some of it just really weird.