Article about a decommissioned communications site in Central North Carolina

The link is to an article in the Raleigh, NC NEWS AND OBSERVER. The article addresses a recently decommissioned site in Chatham County. The site was built by Ma Bell in the Cold War. The article has good detail, and mentions like locations.

www.newsobserver.com...

Coordinates here for Google Earth:
35°46'57.86"N 79° 4'26.16"W

Sure looks like an underground base to me! Road leads right to an obvious bunker door. I wonder if they plan on selling the facility?

[edit on 10-8-2008 by FosterVS]

Enjoyed the comments in the article about trucks hauling off "sensitive" equipment.

Sensitive equipment based on vacuum tube technology from the 60's, no doubt.

There was a similar article in the KC Star several months ago about the old microwave network being dismantled across the country.

Just asign of the times that the old communications networks are being taken apart for more modern equipment.

reply to post by hinky


It is possible that the old equipment would yield clues such as the frequencies being used, modulation scheme, etc., which is the kind of thing the new equipment would still use. Much military gear goes to companies that do destruction. Now these destruct companies don't always smash the gear but sell it off in cash deals, er not that I know anything about that.

Frequencies are well know and established by monitoring past usage. The equipment itself may or may not be sold as scrap but physically demolished by several means to render it it unusable as well as unidentifiable, if there are any national security issues involved. The technology used for this type of communication is well known and understood to a limited extent. I can't believe I'm about to write this.... HAARP is/was part of this type of technology. HAARP is blamed for many things, but it has some legitimate uses.

So much of the "official" radio traffic has gone to satellite usage for one reason or another. Even the old, well established, official use land lines have been replaced with fiber optic network quality communication.

The old stuff is just that, old.

I find these articles interesting when the stuff is decommissioned around the country.

reply to post by hinky


Federal frequencies are well known? Hardly. People work at getting them. Subscribe to the fedcom list and you will see how much work goes into getting federal frequencies. Thanks to narrowbanding, much that was known has been moved.

Tropo scatter is a communications scheme that does not rely on satellites, which is a good thing when the fecal matter hits the fan. The same goes for meteor scatter and of course HF.