Lost place tour: Soviet Radar Station

Hi guys,

here comes a short post from a short trip. Since there is no reasonable way for any ADV riding abroad in the particular conditions here in Europe, we have to improvise something at home. It is even more adventurous, but in a rather unusual way, which is: not getting caught by LE enforcing the current house detention of everybody.  

So, for those of you looking for a lot of riding and scenery pictures, sorry guys, not too much to see here, as I did hardly stop on the way to make pics (see above problem). This is just a bit "inspiration" for people interested in ruins and LPs, cold war stuff in general etc.. Also this was a short test ride only, with my bike just out of major inspection and with new clutch installed. I might do more of this, if time, weather and the C-disease situation permit.

The target of this tour was an abandoned and scrapped soviet radar station in my wider home area, in what used to be the communist part of Germany. The station, as far as my research goes, once belonged to the 1st Guard-Tank-Army, headquartered in Dresden. It was operated by the 113th Radar Company, as part of 51st Radio Battalion, subordinated to the Commander of Air Defense of said Army. The station was probably built in the late 1960s and shut down/ abandoned on 2nd July of 1991. The estate is not used today, apart from a huge Enercon E-82 type, 2.3 MW wind turbine, erected in a central spot of the site.

Let's go:


Frozen field roads


My GPS tells me, we are closing in on the target:


Made it in through some bushes and woods on the back side, to avoid being seen from a not so far away country road. Parked/ hid the bike in the first building I came across.


Went for a walk to explore the site. Right there in another part of that same broken building, I found what used to be a vehicle field repair shop. Posters on the walls show the "Ural" type standard 6x6 Soviet Army Truck. Unfortunately some very stupid people tried to peel these posters of the wall, probably for taking them home. When they failed in doing so, these idiots still continued trying, ripping away much of the nice instruction pictures. This probably happened long before the advent of cameras in mobile phones...




Ventured on and found a watch tower at the "official" site entry. Saw that it was certainly way easier to get in through the main gate and the chances of being "detected" by unfriendly observers from the country road turned out to be minimal anyways.




Obviously I could not resist to get up there.., however the floor of the tower was gone, so I did not dare to really get into it. The cold December winds rocked the entire construction from left to right, and with my slick sole, stiff MX boots on, I did not really get comfortable with this monkey exercise.



The device case on the wall was a telephone manufactured in East Germany, as I could tell by the type plate. Much of the Soviet infrastructure here used to be built by East German troops and suppliers.



Soviets grew apple trees inside of their military installations, here comes the proof: (some locals should cut them properly, would still make for a nice free harvest each year)


Inside the area there are many huge bumps and holes in the ground, all overgrown, and hard to tell what all that was good for once. However, I found one major elevated platform with a ramp going up to it. Maybe that was where the main radar antenna used to be erected. Just my uniformed guess. I was a child when this site was in operation and can't remember that we ever drove by that area.





That's the mighty E-82 by the way..


Another small building, looks like used-to-be control room or such (not related to the turbine next to it):


Seems that this was excessively used for the infamous "illegal" techno parties during the 90ies. ("illegal" more as a self-glorifying cult of that crowd, because actually nobody gave a damn F about these kids)



Remnants of on site roads with trees already lifting up the massive curbstones in some spots.




Another type of watch tower with a strange V-shaped inside support structure. This one looked so rotten that I did not even think about going up.


Не курить = Do not smoke!


If you can't break through the door, why not go through the wall...


These roofs though, few years yet, all that is going to collapse..



Time to say goodbye to this place, spent almost an hour wandering around there, it was midday and I started sweating in my dress up for sub zero deg C riding. Temperature came up in the plus range at this point.


Some scenery from the way home yet:


In the distance, the castle Augustusburg, they have a nice motorbike museum up there and are host of an annual winter bikers meeting with camping in the snow and all such fun for the die hards. Obviously all closed and cancelled in these times for the known reasons.


So at the end of the day I had 87 km (54 miles) on the GPX tracker, with zero LE encountered what so ever.

On that same day, some new neighbours of mine had been held up and scrutinized to their bones two times. They were doing their move to the new place next to us, and hence had a qualified "cogent reason", as it is called here. They were so pissed off...

Anyways, hope I did not bore too much with this ruins stuff. That's just what I am currently interested in, to give the rides some scope and frame. Cheers!  

Thanks that was fun! Happy New Year!

Cool stuff =)