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Shortwave "Discone" Antenna, Former AT&T High Seas Radio Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
All the pixels, somewhat obsolete, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4141766569/
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Captured with a DSLR and a 24mm shifting lens.
During the 20th century, AT&T operated a shortwave "radiotelephone" service for vessels on the high seas. Ships could contact an operator, who could connect them with any landline telephone number they wished.
The North Atlantic station, callsign WOO, occupied expansive transmit and receive "antenna farms" in marshlands near the shore in central New Jersey.
Rendered obsolete by satellites, the service ceased operation on November 9, 1999.
There were three AT&T radiotelephone sites in the continental US, each with its own transmit and receive antenna farms: Ocean Gate, NJ (shown here, serving the North Atlantic), Miami (serving the Caribbean and the Gulf), and Point Reyes, CA (serving the Pacific).
All the sites have by now been razed, either for redevelopment or as nature preserves. The antennas are mostly gone now.
@mattblaze@federate.social The radiotelephone site at Point Reyes reminds me of Marconi Station Bolinas, not far away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marconi-RCA_Bolinas_Transmitting_Station
@jmeowmeow@hachyderm.io Bolinas became the transmit site for Point Reyes (for AT&T, RSA, and the USGC).
Ships on the high seas occasionally currently make some use of shortwave radio, but its importance has greatly diminished in the last few decades. The Coast Guard still maintains a "watch" on emergency shortwave frequencies, listening for distress calls, but most transoceanic ships are now equipped with more modern, higher-bandwidth satellite communications systems.
@mattblaze@federate.social I listened to those radiotelephone calls on my shortwave in the 80s. Now I'm here in the future. It's better, but we lost many things to creative destruction.
@mattblaze@federate.social
There’s no equivalent SWL library I know of to record the sounds of various shortwave tech as it passes away never to be heard from again, e.g. Loran A signals on 1.85/1.95 MHz. Same for ships at sea.
@wa7iut@mastodon.radio There are some archives out there, but they're scattered and largely poorly indexed.
@mattblaze@federate.social
I meant, library equivalent to the Internet Archive. Well, I imagine the NSA has one, but…
Thanks!
ps, I ran across the Radio South Africa sign-off on YouTube a while back. It seemed very exotic to me as a kid listening on my radio in Washington State.
https://youtu.be/2JZ8N_gk9SY?si=SNmyoGM02R7sVaJe
@wa7iut @mattblaze There's the Signal ID wiki: https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/LORAN
@kyhwana @mattblaze
Thanks! LORAN A sounded a lot different. It operated around 1.8 MHz. It was more of a droning, like a piston engine airpland cruising along. LORAN C operates at 100 kHz and sounds more impulse or digital to me. I was actively listening in the late 1960s and LORAN A went away in favor of LORAN C in the early 70s. Soundtrack of my youth, along with WWV😂
@wa7iut @kyhwana That's also my recollection of what LORAN-A sounded like. More of a buzz than a pulse (which is how LORAN-C sounds).
The Russian Woodpecker (which was actually Ukrainian!) is another of the sounds I won't forget but that are almost lost to history.
@wa7iut@mastodon.radio @kyhwana@furry.nz And don't get me started about WGU-20...
@mattblaze@federate.social look up Lualualei ELF in wikipedia, we still have one!