As it got dark they began the arduous procedure of aiming the laser and something very quickly dawned on everyone: While considerable attention had been made in the design and alignment of the laser’s optics and in achieving good sensitivity of the optical receiver, no-one had really thought too seriously about the practical difficulties of aiming a very narrow beam over a distance of 118+ miles! Using a number of improvised techniques, the laser crew managed to get the beam “close”, setting the elevation with various shims and other pieces onhand, but getting both azimuth (horizontal) and elevation (vertical) dialed in proved to be a hair-pulling task.

After a bit of fussing, the receive site crew was tantalized by the occasional brief, bright flash from the distant laser but it seemed as though the transmit site crew could never repeat the maneuver - plus the necessary corrections - to get the laser back and on-point! When the receive site crew queried the Grassy Hollow folks about this on the radio it turned out that they were using two primitive tools to adjust the aiming of the laser: A large rock tapped at the end of the metal channel in which the laser was mounted for coarse adjustments and a much smaller rock for fine-tuning!

Having had to re-align a microwave radio link over a distance of about 30 miles, using a mount that was actually designed to make fine adjustments, I can only imagine how frustrating this was!