RF Comm THROUGH the earth!

Dept. of Energy has submitted a patent that will allow traditional RF communication through meters of earth. So in other words, it is theorhetically possible to communicate via radiowaves more than 200 meters below the surface....

Interesting stuff.

appft1.uspto.gov... OS=GOVT/Energy&RS=GOVT/Energy

Interesting. I know that earthquakes can produce radio waves, so it makes sense to make use of that property.

Well, this is pretty cool, although technically it is not 'RF comm' or 'radio waves', because the frequencies mentioned in that link are too low for that. Depending on what some of the transmission characteristics of the earth are, this could work.

I was under the impression that VLF could travel through the Earth's crust? Apparently, during the Cold War, there was this huge radio transceiver south of Moscow, set up specifically to communicate with Russian Navy submarines. That radio waves would travel through the water/earth so that the submarines would know when to come to the surface, or something like that.

I'll go find the book. Hang on.

edit:

"October Fury," Peter Huchthausen, 2002

The communications officer, too, tried to hide his eagerness to receive news, an order, anything. It was standard procedure for the fleet broadcast to come up on the low frequency schedules to provide brief periods of communications support for submarines in midocean. Maybe ten minutes at the most. The massive low-frequency antenna farm south-east of Moscow was sending nothing to them—at least nothing more than the carrier tone—to tell them that their equipment was functioning. The low-frequency broadcast had always intrigued Shumkov, although he was a well-educated radio technician. The thought that the low-frequency waves actually propagated through the surface of the Earth and into the depths of the oceans, reaching out tens of thousands of kilometers around the globe, fascinated him. The thought that his equipment was tuned and provided the key card to read an encoded message at these great distances was still a magical, almost religious aspect to him personally.

Also, behindthescenes, would it be possible for you to shorten that quote? Write it like this: [url=(website address, remove rounded brackets)]Radio Comm Website[/url]. If you do that, all that will show will be the 'Radio Comm Website' line, and all you have to do is click on it and it will take you to the address you put in.

[edit on 20/9/2006 by watch_the_rocks]

Yeah, that Russian tech sounds familiar to me, I think I read about it somewhere also. The link posted (which strangely has changed to point to a patent irrelevant to this discussion) mentioned frequencies that were in the range of a few hundred kHz. I stupidly said that these were not RF frequencies, but they are. I was thinking about Nygdan's comment when I said that, because earthquake waves are only a few Hz, and those are definitely not RF.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
I was under the impression that VLF could travel through the Earth's crust? Apparently, during the Cold War, there was this huge radio transceiver south of Moscow, set up specifically to communicate with Russian Navy submarines. That radio waves would travel through the water/earth so that the submarines would know when to come to the surface, or something like that.

I'll go find the book. Hang on.

edit:

"October Fury," Peter Huchthausen, 2002

The communications officer, too, tried to hide his eagerness to receive news, an order, anything. It was standard procedure for the fleet broadcast to come up on the low frequency schedules to provide brief periods of communications support for submarines in midocean. Maybe ten minutes at the most. The massive low-frequency antenna farm south-east of Moscow was sending nothing to them—at least nothing more than the carrier tone—to tell them that their equipment was functioning. The low-frequency broadcast had always intrigued Shumkov, although he was a well-educated radio technician. The thought that the low-frequency waves actually propagated through the surface of the Earth and into the depths of the oceans, reaching out tens of thousands of kilometers around the globe, fascinated him. The thought that his equipment was tuned and provided the key card to read an encoded message at these great distances was still a magical, almost religious aspect to him personally.

Also, behindthescenes, would it be possible for you to shorten that quote? Write it like this: [url=(website address, remove rounded brackets)]Radio Comm Website[/url]. If you do that, all that will show will be the 'Radio Comm Website' line, and all you have to do is click on it and it will take you to the address you put in.

[edit on 20/9/2006 by watch_the_rocks]

While VLF is used in submarine comms. I think you might be referring to ELF. The US Navy had two ELF sites, Clam Lake, Wisconsin and Republic, Michigan, until 2004. Now they mostly rely on VLF and/or SSIXS

www.fas.org...=%22Clam%20Lake%20Wisconsin%22

en.wikipedia.org...

www.fas.org...

Come to think of it, isn't there a VLF relay station in Australia somewhere, in WA, possibly, that was set up by the U.S.N. to communicate with their submarines in the south Indian Ocean?

Also, I think I just found a description of the Soviet antenna, or at least what it was designed from:

A German antenna was erected during the Second World War called Goliath. It was quite efficient but was limited both in power and efficiency by the wartime lack of copper and other suitable materials. It was used for submarine communications. After the war, the then Soviet Union seized the Goliath antenna, packed up its massive cables and towers, and assembled it inside the Soviet Union near Gorky. (I’m not sure where we learned about the design of the Goliath. I wonder if it was from captured German plans?)

NAA is located on a peninsula at Cutler, Maine. A diagram of this station shows two giant sub-antennas, each as large as several football fields and requiring twenty six 800-to-900 foot towers fed by two large transmitters. The antenna is split into a North and a South array. Each array is fed from a separate helix building and a transmitter building housing two transmitters is also located midway between the arrays. The transmitters can each supply one megawatt. Each antenna array resembles a six-sided compass rosette. The antenna feed point is located at the center of the rosette where the special building called the helix house is located.

Looking over a schematic of the helix house equipment you see what looks like a simple matching network consisting of a few coils called variometers and something called a reactor. A variometer consists of two coils, a stator and a rotor. The rotor is located inside of the stator and is connected in series with the stator. When the rotor is rotated the mutual coupling either aids or reduces the effective inductance of the variometer. Since the antennas are operated below their natural resonance their impedance is capacitive and must be tuned by a series variometer. However, when looking at the equipment inside the helix house you see nothing familiar. In reality, this is a link-coupled antenna matching circuit, but that is where the similarity to familiar low powered equipment stops. The helix house is jammed full of giant coils and openly wound transformers, most larger than a large truck. The inductor wires are about 4 inches in diameter consisting of multiple strands of Litz wire. The antenna itself is tuned with a series variometer while a shunt variometer couples the signal into the antenna tuner from a coaxial feed line leading from the transmitter through a long underground tunnel.

That page is very interesting.

Additionally, this here appears to be a VLF farm with 7 towers, correct me if I'm wrong. I probably am.

Also, this image, , appears to be plans for some sort of 'valley span antenna,' over Sydney Harbour!

And here we go:

Exmouth.wa.gov.au

In 1962 agreement was reached between the Australian and United States Governments to establish a VLF Communications Station at North West Cape. The town of Exmouth was created to support this facility. Both were officially opened in 1967.

This VLF station is not listed on the table Wikipedia has of VLF stations around the world. Does anyone know if it is deactivated?

Named in honour of former Australian Prime Minister Harold E. Holt, the Untied States Navy Very Low Frequency Transmitter Station has thirteen towers, all more than 300 metres high, to support the antenna canopy.

13 of the things all of which are more than 300 METRES HIGH!!

Incredible.

I always thought it was a long antenna dug into the ground. It's actually like one of them valley span ones.

For those interested, I drew a crude map of where it is located in Australia.



Yeah, I know, I should become a graphic artist.

Anyway, I find this very interesting. I've heard there is a transmitting station in Victoria somewhere that does something very bad. I might actually look into that.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
Come to think of it, isn't there a VLF relay station in Australia somewhere, in WA, possibly, that was set up by the U.S.N. to communicate with their submarines in the south Indian Ocean?

Also, I think I just found a description of the Soviet antenna, or at least what it was designed from:

A German antenna was erected during the Second World War called Goliath. It was quite efficient but was limited both in power and efficiency by the wartime lack of copper and other suitable materials. It was used for submarine communications. After the war, the then Soviet Union seized the Goliath antenna, packed up its massive cables and towers, and assembled it inside the Soviet Union near Gorky. (I’m not sure where we learned about the design of the Goliath. I wonder if it was from captured German plans?)

NAA is located on a peninsula at Cutler, Maine. A diagram of this station shows two giant sub-antennas, each as large as several football fields and requiring twenty six 800-to-900 foot towers fed by two large transmitters. The antenna is split into a North and a South array. Each array is fed from a separate helix building and a transmitter building housing two transmitters is also located midway between the arrays. The transmitters can each supply one megawatt. Each antenna array resembles a six-sided compass rosette. The antenna feed point is located at the center of the rosette where the special building called the helix house is located.

Looking over a schematic of the helix house equipment you see what looks like a simple matching network consisting of a few coils called variometers and something called a reactor. A variometer consists of two coils, a stator and a rotor. The rotor is located inside of the stator and is connected in series with the stator. When the rotor is rotated the mutual coupling either aids or reduces the effective inductance of the variometer. Since the antennas are operated below their natural resonance their impedance is capacitive and must be tuned by a series variometer. However, when looking at the equipment inside the helix house you see nothing familiar. In reality, this is a link-coupled antenna matching circuit, but that is where the similarity to familiar low powered equipment stops. The helix house is jammed full of giant coils and openly wound transformers, most larger than a large truck. The inductor wires are about 4 inches in diameter consisting of multiple strands of Litz wire. The antenna itself is tuned with a series variometer while a shunt variometer couples the signal into the antenna tuner from a coaxial feed line leading from the transmitter through a long underground tunnel.

That page is very interesting.

Additionally, this here appears to be a VLF farm with 7 towers, correct me if I'm wrong. I probably am.

Also, this image, , appears to be plans for some sort of 'valley span antenna,' over Sydney Harbour!

And here we go:

Exmouth.wa.gov.au

In 1962 agreement was reached between the Australian and United States Governments to establish a VLF Communications Station at North West Cape. The town of Exmouth was created to support this facility. Both were officially opened in 1967.

This VLF station is not listed on the table Wikipedia has of VLF stations around the world. Does anyone know if it is deactivated?

Harold E Hold VLF site was active in 1995 when i left Japan. Not sure if it's still active or not.

In April 1999 it was struck by Cyclone Vance with 276 kph winds.

In 1999 the Australian Navy took it over.

In 2003 the US was negotiating to return to HEH.

www.theage.com.au...

I just found a neat page with the Cutler Maine VLF station pictures and diagrammed. I wish I understood electronics better. They can't use this stuff for HAARP can they?
Eyeballing the Naval Telecomunications and Radar Facility Cutler

Here's a great write up on Cutler:
Cutler

A picture to entice you to follow the links for more.






eyeball-series.org...


EDIT: Looks like they are mothballing it.

[edit on 7/29/08 by stikkinikki]

When you look at the wave length involved for transmission, the earth had to be the antenna for it to work. Just ain't enough wire otherwise.

Thread about AU complex here.

Some more info on these radio frequencies are here.

Hope this helps....

I just visited the Cutler, ME site today. If anyone is interested I can post some pictures.