Vertical Antenna ALMOST as Tall as the Empire State Building!
Created by Paul Signorelli, W0RW on 2024-12-10
Vertical Antenna ALMOST as Tall as the Empire State Building!
The US Air Force 487L program, (Also known as the Survivable Low Frequency Communications System), built two Low Frequency ground stations in about 1965, one at Hawes (near Barstow), California and one at Silver Creek, Nebraska.
Hawes was an old, abandoned airfield used in WW2. This is in the middle of the Mojave Desert and has nice warm weather in the summer. There were snakes and scorpions, The scorpions would come out on cold nights and lay on the paved access road to keep warm. When you drive that road at night you would crush hundreds of them.
(Ed. Note, all scorpions glow at night under UV light. See picture and more information at: https://online.kidsdiscover.com/quickread/what-makes-scorpions-glow-in-ultraviolet-light).
The vertical antenna was made of about 1 million pounds of stainless steel and was 1226 feet high. That is about the same height as the Empire State Building, which is 1250 feet in height.
See: https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?compare=63081
Wouldn’t you like to try that antenna out on 630 Meters? There were stories of some Hams connecting it to their Ham Rig. Not sure if it was true.
The loading coil at the base (Inside the Helix House) was huge, it had a big water-cooled coil that looked like some local plumber built out of 3 inch copper drain pipes. Sorry I can’t give exact dimensions.
I saw the antenna when I was driving west out of Barstow on Highway 58. I was an Independent Contractor for a different part of the program in Boron.
It had an elevator that took the maintenance engineers to the top. (Another story reports that one engineer got suck alone on the top when the elevator malfunctioned, and he had no communication with the bunker).
There is a lot of technical data online and I have included several links because they seem to disappear after a while:
https://shanekeven.typepad.com/evoke/2010/11/a-part-of-the-story-of-hinkley.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawes_Radio_Relay_Site
It was decommissioned in 1986, and the video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuL8WS9i2As
Paul, w0rw
| WA9AFM | 2024-12-25 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical Antenna ALMOST as Tall as the Empire State Building! | ||
| We had 487L SLFCS on the TitanII ICBM sites. The helix antenna was buried to protect it. The 'kerchunk' of the printer always got our attention. The print out was the best, but it was fine as a backup to the backup. | ||
| W0RW | 2024-12-15 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical Antenna ALMOST as Tall as the Empire State Building! | ||
| Silver Creek was the same. See https://www.vigilantprairie.org/silvercreek.php Paul w0rw | ||
| AC8S | 2024-12-15 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical Antenna ALMOST as Tall as the Empire State Building! | ||
| Paul, THAT, IS, FANTASTIC info, and I thank you, for sharing that with us, that's for sure!!! I am wondering though, what is the height of the vertical at Silver Creek, Nebraska? Is it the same, or taller, or shorter? Again, thank you so much, for sharing that with us, I did not know, about those verticals!!! 73, Trippy, AC8S | ||
