Pinetree Line Miscellaneous

Office of the Deputy Minister of National Defence

7 April, 1964

1. I have just had a meeting with the Air Force to receive a briefing on some of the complications arising from the phase-out of the four Pinetree stations at Parent, Edgar, St. Sylvestre and Beaverbank, in which I think you might be interested.
2. Parent currently has a terminal ADCom site; this will now have to be down-graded to a relay and provided with new APU’s because of loss of prime power from the Pinetree station. Also, Parent has been serving the northern section of the line as a helicopter terminal and service facility. This will have to be moved to Senneterre and will involve the movement of a steel building which can be disassembled, along with all the helicopter support equipment currently installed in the building.
3. At St. Sylvestre the present ADCom terminal is housed in a building which would need a complete renovation if it is to remain in operation much longer. The Air Force therefore proposes a cheaper alternative, to build a new terminal which is better oriented geographically to the ADCom communications ring.
4. At Edgar the present terminal must be moved because of propagation difficulties on the current paths feeding this terminal, and again it is proposed to remove it from the station and orientate it to better advantage.
5. All these changes in the ADCom system are going to amount to approximately $600,000 of which about 60% is for construction and the remainder for re-installation, new towers and the like. Very little new equipment is needed since this will be moved sequentially from the various terminals and relays mentioned above as they are relocated.
6. These additional expenditures will probably be phased over at least the next two years. I suppose they could be likened to the termination charges that we are paying on our leased communications which will amount to approximately $1.5 million. Of this, approximately $1 million will be cost shared with USAF on the basis two-thirds USAF/one-third RCAF, but the remainder will be paid entirely by RCAF. Hence the total cost to DND of phase out of the four radar stations, including re-arrangements to ADCom, and termination charges of leased facilities, will be about $1.4 million.
7. Air Force proposes to have these alterations carried out as a turn-key operation much the same as we conducted the original ADCom contract. I favour this approach.
8. For your information.

Signed by:

LG Crutchlow
SREL