Here we are, ready to leave the Gemlik to Kumla highway by turning up the "TUSLOG Highway", otherwise know as the road to TUSLOG Detachment 150, Sahintepe, Turkey.  From this sign, it was almost 7 miles up a dirt road, cut in many places, along the side of the hills or right on the crest of the cliffs.  Often, we had Turkish truckdrivers who would refuse to drive up the hill to deliver supplies because they thought the road was too dangerous.  Let's take a ride and see what it looked like from the passenger seat of a six passenger pickup truck.  As we leave the Gemlik to Kumla highway and start up the hill to the right, we're heading up to the right, in the generally northeastern direction.

Here we are at the first hairpin turn, two miles up, where out the passenger window to the south and Southeast, you can see the Sea of Marmara and the city of Gemlik (population about 20,000 in 1982 when I was at Sahintepe).  Gemlik is the city at the left of picture near the water.  The Turkish Army Veterinary School is located straight ahead near the far edge of the Sea where it meets Gemlik's harbor.  The city of Bursa (population 500,000 in 1982) is about 25 miles over the hills on the far side of the water.  We used to go to Bursa for shopping trips and some of our folks skied at the winter resort called Uladag.  The locals told us this hill you are looking down from is where the friends of Jason came ashore in Greek mythology to search for Jason and the Argonauts.

At the three mile mark, the road is heading to the east and the site first comes into view off to your left to the north.  You can see the barest beginnings of antennas and buildings showing on the highest point on the horizon between the center and right of the picture.

At the five mile point, the road is still heading to the east, but you are just about ready to make a left turn into a curve and go straight the final two miles to the front gate of the site. You'll notice how the weather changed in the last two miles.  This often happened due to the Sea of Marmara's lake effect on the rain, fog, atmosphere, snow, etc. 

We cannot stop from here on as the sides of the road are pretty much sheer hillsides dropping anywhere from 500 to 1000 feet down to lower foothills.  In about five minutes, we climb one last steep incline and turn to the left, arriving at the gate of TUSLOG Detachment 150, Sahintepe.

You would approach from the lower left corner of the picture and turn in to the right of the guard shack where the Turkish flag is flying.  You would show your gate pass to get into the site.  Let me get mine out so we can go through the gate!

The red building above and slightly to the left of the guard shack is the motor pool.  The building behind the four diesel oil tanks above the motor pool is the 1.5 megawatt power plan which provided the site's electricity. 

If you drove straight up the road to the right of the motor pool building, you would pass in front of the "power house" and come to the radio building where radio maintenance and technical control were located.  The circular dish antennas facing to the left of the picture transmitted and received radio signals from TUSLOG radio sites at Yamanlar and Balikesehir.  The round antenna to the left of the first billboard antenna transmitted and received from the TUSLOG unit at Eskiesheir.  The two billboard antennas transmitted signals from the TUSLOG unit at Elmadag, which overlooked the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Turning right from the guard shack, the road leading almost into a hairpin turn led to our helipad.  If you went straight down the hill, the road curved and wrapped around the dining hall/recreation center/movie theater and the dormitory/orderly room building where I worked like the site's "Radar O'Reilly".