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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt

Looking for information about the new anti-missile radar we are installing in Romania (!?!), I stumbled across this place, which is much, much, weirder.

Picture from Stan Deyo.

    Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt is located on the northwest coast of Australia, 4 miles North of the town of Exmouth, Western Australia. The town was built at the same time as the communications station to provide support to the base and to house dependent families of U.S. Navy personnel.
    The station provides Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio transmission to United States Navy and Royal Australian Navy ships and submarines in the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean. With a transmission power of 1 megawatt, it is the most powerful transmission station in the Southern Hemisphere.
    The antenna for this transmitter is a large spider web of wire supported in a top hat arrangement by 13 steel towers. Tower Zero (in the center) is 1,270 feet tall, and was for many years the tallest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere. 
    The other towers are spread out in two concentric hexagons around Tower Zero; the towers of the inner ring are 1,200 feet high. Those of the outer ring are 1,000 feet high. Buried in the ground beneath the antenna array is 240 miles of bare copper ground mat. There are 357 guy wires holding the towers in place. - Condensed from Wikipedia.

 Google map of the area.
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6 comments:

  1. TamOctober 30, 2013 at 6:59:00 AM PDT

    "Buried in the ground beneath the antenna array is 240 miles of bare copper ground mat."

    In Detroit, they'd have dug that up and sold it for meth money years ago... ;)

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  2. Comrade MisfitOctober 30, 2013 at 8:45:00 AM PDT

    I thought Detroit was more of a coke/smack/grass town.

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  3. RustyGunnerOctober 30, 2013 at 10:35:00 AM PDT

    VLF antennae have to be looooooooong.....

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  4. TamOctober 30, 2013 at 10:48:00 AM PDT

    Comrade Misfit,

    Check your briefing sheet: Meth is blamed for all societal ills until Q3, at which time the rollover to blaming prescription drug abuse should be finished and ready for implementation.

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  5. Ole Phat StuOctober 30, 2013 at 11:27:00 PM PDT

    They are on 13.0 kHz and you can hear them all around the world!

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  6. Chuck PergielOctober 31, 2013 at 9:57:00 PM PDT

    I was thinking it was down around one Hz. 13KHz would give you a wavelength of 14.3 miles. Diameter of outer hexagon is 1.6 miles, which is 1/9 of a wavelength. I'm just making notes because I bothered to calculate these numbers. Make of them what you will.

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