ULF Antenna In Indy?

[IndyEmsGuy]

I was wondering if anyone knew of this. On 16th street just a block or so east of Arlington there is a facility with what appears to be a horizontal antenna running across the ground. The whole area is fenced off. I was told by a coworker that this is a Raytheon facility and the antenna is a ULF antenna they use to talk to submarines. Does anyone know anything about this? Or how the ULF stuff works? And if it is not encrypted, which it probably is, is it scannable? If anyone knows anything about this please enlighten me.

Thanks,

Kris

 

[Viper43]

Ultra Low Frequency, It's been there for years. No it can't be scanned, you can hear it with a shortwave radio in the AM band, I think it's SSB and it is nothing but a verly slow, long Morse Code type signal thats able to penetrate the ocean. I heard it once but it takes forever to send and recieve a signal. I forget the frequencies used but it's way down under 100Khz.

Raytheon is closing up, I wonder if another military type tech company will move in there.

V

 

[IndyEmsGuy]

Hmm thats interesting. I am gonna have to do some research on it. BTW are you a Ham radio operator?

 

[IndyEmsGuy]

do you know why the antenna for such a thing is horizontal across the ground?

 

[Viper43]

Yeah, I'm a ham.... in more ways than one according to some

The horizontal orientation reason escapes me at the moment, I read about the ULF system more than 20 years ago. I am however thinking the one here in Indy is recieve only as the transmitting antennas are huge. One is in Wisconsin if I remember correctly.

V

 

[Viper43]

heres is one link for ULF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_low_frequency

V

 

[GTO_04]

Yeah, I'm a ham.... in more ways than one according to some

The horizontal orientation reason escapes me at the moment, I read about the ULF system more than 20 years ago. I am however thinking the one here in Indy is recieve only as the transmitting antennas are huge. One is in Wisconsin if I remember correctly.

V

The ELF antenna in Wisconsin was about 28 miles long, according to an article in Popular Communications many years ago.

As far as why it's horizontal, I can think of two possible reason. First, the signal polarization would be better for communicating with the subs. Second, the antenna is just too huge to mount vetically.

GTO_04

 

[ecps92]

Link

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1044634
Recent announcement of Contract

I was wondering if anyone knew of this. On 16th street just a block or so east of Arlington there is a facility with what appears to be a horizontal antenna running across the ground. The whole area is fenced off. I was told by a coworker that this is a Raytheon facility and the antenna is a ULF antenna they use to talk to submarines. Does anyone know anything about this? Or how the ULF stuff works? And if it is not encrypted, which it probably is, is it scannable? If anyone knows anything about this please enlighten me.

Thanks,

Kris

 

[dfoutch]

WWV on 60Khz {I think} will set your clock.

 

[W9NES]

WWV is on 5, 10, 15, 20Mhz

 

[Viper43]

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1044634
Recent announcement of Contract

That won't affect the Indy operations as it is closing up. It's too bad, they developed a lot of shipboard systems here. some of which used chips made by a relatives company that developed thin film technology.

V

 

[Viper43]

The ELF antenna in Wisconsin was about 28 miles long, according to an article in Popular Communications many years ago.

As far as why it's horizontal, I can think of two possible reason. First, the signal polarization would be better for communicating with the subs. Second, the antenna is just too huge to mount vetically.

GTO_04

Yeah, I think thats where I saw it too, I knew it was huge, and 28 miles sounds about right. I thought it was hilarious at the time on how long it took to transmit a single letter. A good thing they used short codes!

V

 

[dfoutch]

Go see:

http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/stations/wwvb.htm

 

[kb9sxk]

WWV is on 5, 10, 15, 20Mhz

And then some. They have a LW set of freqs too

 

[Viper43]

Beck on topic....
Here are some links for reading up on ULF for sub comms.

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0910973

http://www.ia.spacegrant.org/RES_INF/VRR2003/Kruger-SEED.pdf

http://www.vlf.it/itulist/itulist.htm

http://www.milnet.com/pentagon/seawolf.htm

That should help you, and get the thread off of WWV time and back to subject of the OP....

V