I took a ferry ride from Bella Coola on the British Columbia central coast to Port Hardy on the north end of Vancouver Island. It was my first real vacation since 2019. The ocean going ferry Northern Seawolf secures the cars and trucks for rough seas and on this passage of ten hours, half the time was on the open ocean. Fortunately the Pacific was living up to its name. The deep fjords of the BC coast sheltered us at the start of the voyage. The scenery was spectacular. I stood under the radar mast. I was listening to the radar twenty feet above me.
There were two radars one above the other rotating 180 degrees apart. The collection dishes were the long horizontal ones, Sperry Marine radars. I could hear them even well out of their direct beam. I was probably hearing side lobes of the main beams. The sound was not the whoosh airmen of WWII heard from the overpowered military radars of that time. I heard high frequency pings near the top of my hearing between 15,000 and 20,000 cycles per second. I do not know for sure. I do not know the emissions of the radars assuming each radar was at different microwave frequency. The Electromagnetic frequencies could be megahertz or gigahertz but I was hearing it at a longer sonic wavelength. Overtones? Harmonics?
I was standing on the top deck of the ferry expecting to hear something because I have been hearing radar since 1956-7 when NORAD turned on the Distant Early Warning radars to detect Soviet missiles flying over the North Pole towards the USA. It is called tinnitus, ringing in the ears. It has been constant for 65 years. It was not caused by loud rock and roll concerts as I had never been to one at age 6 to 7. My younger sister also heard the ringing in our Vancouver BC home.
The sound is like audio feedback when a microphone is placed in front of a speaker. A mixture of frequencies make multiple trips between the microphone and the amplifier then to the speaker. The frequency and the volume increase in seconds until it is a cluster of screeching that the audio technician quickly shuts down. Now as I type this email the squeal from NORAD radar on a mountaintop ten miles away is very loud.
People say to clear the wax out of my ears and the tinnitus will go away. That does not work. Plugging my ears with my fingers does not do anything. The tone and volume in both ears is the same. I believe the radar is directly vibrating the fine hairs of the cochlea and has nothing to do with the middle ear. The ringing increased February 24 2022 when Russia invaded the Ukraine. NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain Colorado turned up the volume.
There are four bands of radar across Canada from coast to coast. I am near the Pinetree line about 51 degrees north latitude. Canada is being microwaved in order to keep America safe. There are probable ill health effects. The civilian navigation radars on the ferry were faint compared to the NORAD radars.
Over the years I have noticed the artificiality of the ringing in my ears. A number of times in the 1960s and 1970s there was a change of tone. Often the change was at the top of the hour. One time about 1972 one radar shutdown at the top of the hour and the new radar did not start up until two seconds later. The silence was deafening. Another hint of the man made nature of tinnitus is that radio stations are louder at night than during the day, ringing in the ears is louder as night.
If the radar is impinging on the fine hairs in my cochlea and it is affecting many others then it is disturbing insects and animals as well. There has been a great die-off of insects in Canada. Traveling in Canada by car in summer in the 1950s meant cleaning the windshield every fill up. I just completed a 2500 mile road trip and only cleaned off the windshield once. We used to tie screen to the front of the radiators to prevent the air flow from being blocked. I have not seen those screens in thirty years.
The Distant Early Warning radars on the edge of the Arctic Ocean were built at great expense in the 1950s and were shutdown ten to twenty years later as satellites did a better job. Why are we still being irradiated with microwaves six decades later when satellites do a better job scanning over the horizon. Even a weather satellite with optical and infrared cameras provide a clearer picture than radar.
NORAD is unnecessary. Shut it down.
Zuerrnnovahh-Starr Livingstone