[bars] Fwd: [yccc] Interesting OT: 500 Kw AM radio

[Geoffrey Feldman]

Further OT

 

Project Sanguine, later rebranded Project Seafarer, was a transmitter in Wisconsin that operated on 85 Hz (that’s not a typo) ELF,  and probably higher power even than WLW.  Its purpose was communicating with submarines while at their operating depth. (Yes, I know that we don’t think of RF as penetrating underwater but that also was the idea).  The project was secret, at one point, even its exact nature was secret.

 

The story was that it could be used to call off a nuclear attack.   If you work through the amount of information that could be sent at that frequency, and assume it was also encrypted, it was more likely to start a nuclear attack. The message would come too late to stop one.   There is a some stuff to google these days and that’s interesting but appears incomplete.

 

WLW and Seafarer are the basis for QRZ quiz questions, which reminds me …

 

Yes, I know that submarines do deploy an antenna to the surface and communicate by more typical means.  This is different.

 

Now how did I learn of this in the 1970’s?  That’s a story for another day. However, I did not work on that project nor was I ever an employee of the US government.  It’s a better story than that.

 

 

W1GCF

Geoff 

 

From: bars [mailto:bars-bounces at w1hh.org] On Behalf Of Kenneth Weinbeck
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2022 3:23 PM
To: p2vradioguy at gmail.com; k1tw at comcast.net; bars at w1hh.org; ne-cw-friends at groups.io
Subject: [bars] Fwd: [yccc] Interesting OT: 500 Kw AM radio

 



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [yccc] Interesting OT: 500 Kw AM radio
From: "Kermit Lehman via groups.io" <ktfrog007=aol.com at groups.io>
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2022, 12:13 PM
To: yccc at groups.io
CC: 



Something from Quora I found interesting. Here's a good link for further info:

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/mayjune/feature/in-the-1930s-radio-station-wlw-in-ohio-was-americas-one-and-only-sup


73,
Ken, AB1J

Bert Willke  Ph.D. in Physics (1963), Massachusetts Institute of Technology  
What happens if a low frequency wave (1km wavelength) has a super high amplitude? Meaning a ton of energy despite its low energy per photon. How does it interact with matter?That's almost half the frequency of the most powerful AM station ever: WLW at 700 kHz ran 500,000 watts from 1934 to 1939. You could pick it up over half the US in the day and of course anywhere at night. Station engineers had to specially rewire some nearby houses because the lights wouldn't go off. Some continued to pick up the station in their innerspring mattresses. In some cases their gutters were pulled loose. Nearby farmers picked up the station on their barbed wire fences. It came out of loudspeakers whether the radio was on or off. Nonmetals were not significantly affected. Amazingly, no fires were reported. In 1939 the FCC limited clear channel stations to 50,000 watts, and other stations to much lower wattage. 50,000 watt stations are strong enough to be heard almost everywhere at night. Through WW2, the station was kept operable in case of national emergency. By the end of the war it was improved to the point it could transmit at 1 million watts to reach the entire country in national emergencies. Fortunately, it never came to that.


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