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Shortwave "Discone" Antenna, Former AT&T High Seas Radio Transmitter Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
(fedia.io)
Shortwave "Discone" Antenna, Former AT&T High Seas Radio Transmitter Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
All the pixels, none of the per-minute toll charges, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4141766569
#photography
These places are what the Internet looked like a century ago.
I should note that while the site had a number of discone antennas like this one, they were mostly there as backups in case the main antennas (including truly massive wire rhombics pointing toward various oceanic regions) or transmitter combiners failed. The old Bell System did not mess around.
Here, by the way, is what I believe was the last published frequency list and schedule for the High Seas service. (A souvenir of my last visit to the station before it went off the air.)
@mattblaze@federate.social
My Dad was in the Coast Guard before and after the Korean War, and a couple of his tours were "weather patrol" between Newfoundland and Bermuda. In addition to taking observations using wx balloons and radiosondes (I believe), he talked about regularly patching airplanes into the marine operator system. I was surprised to hear him talk about that — i.e., seems like aviation did not have the same communications infrastructure, so the piggyback was necessary.