Radio Waves

Big Antennaes

I am always surprised when I come across a new-to-me giant radio antennae. You'd think I'd learn, but for some reason it is always a bit of a shock. This week's shocker is the Jim Creek Naval Radio Station, which is just north of Seattle, which puts it in my proverbial backyard. Why haven't I heard about this place before? Probably because I'm not hanging with the right crowd, i.e. the extreme radio conspiracy nuts. Well, I'm busy, there are just too many conspiracy theories running around loose out there for me to be able to keep track of them all.


Naval Radio Station Jim Creek
Jim Creek is a VLF station that is used for communicating with our submarines, which reminded me that I came across another one of these on the west coast of Australia a while back. That in turn prompted me to extract all of the radio antennaes I had recorded in my Big Science Map and make up the map you see above.

Talking to Jack at lunch the other day about my new discovery, he tells me that he had an old VLF war surplus receiver, which prompted to wonder if anyone was picking up these VLF signals.


Receiving VLF with PC and software only
Why, yes, there are a whole bunch of people playing with this, which isn't too surprising since all it takes is a PC and a sound card.

So now I'm wondering if anyone has been able to decrypt these signals. Rooting around I find that since the data rate is so low, the Navy sends out short code words, like five letters long, that stand for prearranged commands, like surface so we can talk to you, or serve mashed potatoes for dinner, or something. So even if you could decrypt these signals, you would still need the code book to interpret them, and then all you might learn is what's on tonight's menu.