# Tropospheric Scatter Principles and Applications (Collins Radio Company, March 1960)

Compiled by [Robin Monks](https://coldwar.tech/about), a Cold War archival expert.

*Collins Radio's March 1960 engineering course on tropospheric scatter, written for the US Army: 161 pages of the real numbers behind a technology later accounts reduce to bouncing signals off the sky.*

## Metadata

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Document Type | technical-manual |
| Creator | Collins Radio Company, Cedar Rapids, Iowa |
| Date | 1960 |
| Classification | Unclassified (approved for public release, distribution A) |
| Document ID | DTIC AD0240280 |
| Original Language | english |

This is the textbook technicians working on this system at the time got. In March 1960 with White Alice already dedicated two years earlier, ACE High under construction, the Soviet R-408 two years from acceptance, Collins Radio wrote the US Army a 161-page course on how troposcatter actually worked: decibels and logarithms first, then scattering theory, fading, diversity reception, klystrons, and “typical equipment used for this type of communication.”

Period engineering texts are the antidote to retrospective mythology. Where later accounts wave at “bouncing signals off the troposphere,” this manual commits to numbers (path losses, bandwidths, tube types) from inside the industry that was building the links. I cite it for the technical claims on my [troposcatter technology page](https://coldwar.tech/technologies/troposcatter).

Source: [DTIC AD0240280](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/trecms/AD0240280/index.html), approved for public release (distribution A). This copy is re-compressed from the 84 MB DTIC scan for web delivery; the original resolution scan is at DTIC.

## Related

- [Tropospheric Scatter Communications](https://coldwar.tech/technologies/troposcatter) (Technologies)

Tags: Collins Radio, troposcatter, technical manual, klystron, diversity reception, 1960

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Last updated: 2026-07-15