These were broadcast platforms that were usually anchored in international waters broadcasting popular music to several European Countries including Great Britain, Holland, France, and Spain in the late 1960s through late 1980s. The reason for these peculiar operations was strict government control of all broadcast outlets and programming in those particular countries. The BBC was known to be stodgy and repressive of new music, particularly rock music from bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks, and others.
At the time, there was no specific law preventing ships anchored in international waters from broadcasting to shore-based listeners, a loophole in the government control was found and exploited. That loophole has been closed in most places, so as they say, don’t try this at home.
At one time there were several ships out there in the English Channel and coastal Denmark. The first and best-known of these was Radio London or “The Big L.” It broadcast on 1133 KHz from December 16, 1964, to August 14, 1967, using a 50,000-watt RCA ampliphase transmitter. The ship itself was the M/V (motor vessel) Gallaxy, a converted WWII minesweeper formerly known as the USS Density. After Radio London went off the air, the ship was transferred from port to port until it ended up in Kiel, Germany, where it was finally scrapped in the late 1990s.
Radio Caroline was the main offshore competitor, broadcasting on 1520 KHz and several other frequencies off and on from 1964 until 1990 or so using several different vessels to transmit from.
MV Galaxy with radio mast
One incident in offshore broadcasting that has always fascinated me was the burning of the Mebo II, then transmitting Radio Northsea International off the coast of Holland (this ship moved around quite a bit) in 1971. Later investigations revealed that the staff of an offshore competitor, Radio Veronica, was responsible for the firing of the ship. Apparently, in those days the competition was brutal.
I like the nice calm music with the increasingly frantic DJ (West, no East). In any case, the ship remained afloat and returned to the air the next day. The final European offshore broadcaster was something called Laser 558 on M/V Communicator. It broadcast using to CSI 25 KW AM transmitters on 558 KHz in 1983, again, off and on for several years until 2004. The CSI-grounded grid transmitters may have been inexpensive to purchase, but I’ll bet they cost a lot to run. This would be especially true if one were using diesel generators as the main electrical power provider. As a result, they were usually run at about 1/2 power. Eventually, M/V Communicator ended up beached in the Orkney Islands off of Scotland.
The only such attempt in the US was Alan Wiener’s MV Sarah, known as “Radio Newyork International” anchored off of Jones Beach on 1620 KHz. The owners figured 4 miles offshore was far enough to be in international waters, but the FCC felt otherwise, I believe at the time, 12 miles was (and still is) the territorial limit for the US. Four miles was not international waters, as the broadcasters claimed. These guys were arrested and sent to trial. After several years all charges were dropped.
Anyway, an interesting bit of radio history. Goes to show the lengths that some will go to when feeling repressed.
On this, the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, some radio history is in order. Before broadcast stations, radio was mainly used by ships at sea sending messages in Morse Code to coastal radio stations. These messages could be routine; we are on schedule, we are carrying such and such cargo, request port clearance, etc. They could also be urgent; the ship is sinking, we need medical advice, etc.
RMS Titanic, April 10, 1912
Most of these early radio stations were owned by Marconi Company, which later became RCA. One of the first Marconi Stations was in Wellfleet Cape Cod, the original call sign was MCC (for Marconi Cape Cod) later changed to WCC.
On April 14th about 11:45 pm, the Titanic struck an ice burg and sank about two and a half hours later. The RMS Titanic call sign MGY was equipped with a radio transmitter at a time when ships were not required to be. Sadly, the finer details of distress procedures for radio-equipped ships had not been worked out. After this incident, radio distress procedures were codified and the SOS evolved into an internationally recognized distress signal.
On the night the ship sank, the Marconi employed radiooperators were sending routine traffic to Cape Race, Newfoundland radio. Because the radio apparatus used spark gap transmitters and crystal radio receivers, interference from other ship stations often caused problems. Earlier in the evening, a Titanic radio operator had strongly rebuked the operator from the closest ship, the SS Californian, telling him to “Shut up, shut up, I am busy; I am working Cape Race.” At about 11 pm the SS Californian operator retired for the evening and the Californian never received the distress call. Sadly, this incident probably led to the high loss of life because the Californian was just over the horizon to the west and would have likely been able to rescue many of the passengers before the Titanic sank.
Coast Guard radioman Jeffrey Herman has a good SOS story from the late 70s. Being stationed in Hawaii, he was on duty late one night at Coast Guard Radio Station Honolulu, call sign NMO.
John Davies, the radio operator on board the Eriskay also has a story about receiving an SOS while at sea. Fortunately, that one turns out a little better.
I remember one night, hearing an automated SOS on the international lifeboat frequency (8364 kHz). I imagined some poor guy cranking the lifeboat radio not knowing if it was going out or not (I was right, it turns out). We heard him on Guam and DF’d him to off the coast near Australia. We notified the Australian authorities, who diverted a nearby ship that picked 26 survivors up the next morning.
I am sure there a quite a few old CW (morse code) radio operators out there that have similar stories. By the 1990s most maritime communications had moved to INMARSAT, and CW and coastal radio stations became redundant.
The end of commercial Morse Code in the US came on July 13, 1999, when KFS, the last coastal radio station, signed off. Most of them have been scrapped and the valuable coastal land sold off to developers.
The development of broadcast radio was a direct offshoot of these radio stations. AM radio, or rather AM technology was developed by ATT as an adjunct for their long-distance system. ATT used High Frequency (HF) voice circuits to span oceans for several decades, up to about the mid-1960s. Amateur radio operators began fooling around with voice broadcasting, using ATT’s patented AM technology around 1915 or so, after tube-type transmitters and receivers became available. Somebody realized that money could be made with the new-fangled radio contraption and commercial broadcasting was born.
I followed this link to this site called “SurvivalRealty.com” and saw this article about what looks to be a former ATT microwave relay site in Utah turned into a residence. The site is much smaller than the former ATT site in Kingston that I profiled in this post. Still, that is a Western Electric tower and those are KS-15676 antennas.
Former ATT microwave site turned into a residence
If I were that guy, I’d take those antennas down a scrap them. Looks like the waveguides are already gone. I might have tried to put some windows in while I was renovating it. It would drive me crazy to live in a house without any windows. I guess if one were waiting for the big one, windows might not be a desired feature of a survival bunker.
I wouldn’t really call it a “communications bunker” though. I’ve been in communications bunkers, they are mostly underground and are much more robust than that building. Still, it is built better than an ordinary commercial building or a regular house. It would take a special person to live out in the middle of nowhere like that.
Once upon a time, in the not-too-distant past, all long-distance communication in the US was handled by one company, AT&T. There was no other company that could transmit data over medium to long distances. The breadth and scope of their communications network are not understood by most people these days. Most people know that AT&T handled long-distance telephone calls for the Bell Telephone System until the Bell breakup in 1984. However, AT&T did a lot more than long-distance phone.
For example, if you watched the network news or network TV show anytime before 1980, it was likely brought to you via AT&T microwave system, known as AT&T long lines. Listen to the news on the radio, same deal. Before the widespread use of communication satellites and fiber optics, the AT&T microwave relay network was the only way to get various types of electronic media signals from one place to another.
Beginning in the late 1980s, competing local and long-distance telephone companies began installing fiber optic cables between company offices. That coupled with the increased use of satellite systems for mass media video and audio delivery services made the huge AT&T microwave network obsolete. Some of the old microwave sites that are located in downtown areas have been reused by local phone companies and cell phone providers. Many of the rural sites now sit empty.
ATT long lines microwave site with towers
This is the former AT&T microwave relay site located near Kingston, NY. It is now owned by American Tower, Inc. There are two towers behind the building, only the tower on the right has a few active communications antennas on it. The taller tower is 190 feet tall and was built in 1957. The shorter tower is 120 feet tall and was built in 1961. Both towers and everything on them were made by Western Electric, the same company that manufactured the telephone sets. Chances are, Western Electric contracted the actual manufacture of equipment out to others, then billed AT&T, their parent company a markup. Something that would make all MBAs proud.
Western electric 190-foot tower, built in 1957
This tower was built in 1957. The structure and galvanizing are still in excellent condition.
The large antennas you see on the towers are microwave horn antennas. They are no longer in use. Several transmitters and receivers would have been connected to each one of these antennas by use of RF multiplexers. Each microwave transmitter/receiver would have had several data channels. Generally, this was C Band microwave equipment, so it was in the 4, 6, and 8 GHz frequency range.
Western Electric KS-15676 microwave antenna
All of this telephone traffic was transmitted on digital data channels unencrypted. Many have argued that this allowed the government (most notably the NSA or National Security Agency) to intercept and listen to most domestic long-distance telephone calls within the US. There is a book called Puzzle palaceby James Bamford if you are interested in NSA history. It was written more than 20 years ago, so it doesn’t really apply today, but it is an interesting look at what the government was up to.
The building itself is huge, the first floor is 16,000+ square feet and the second floor is 10,000+ square feet. Only about 1000 square feet of this space is actively being used.
I believe this building was built in the late 1940s or early 1950s, just as Kingston was growing into a major IBM manufacturing site. It has remnants of the ATT coaxial-based system that was used prior to microwaves. The IBM buildings are located a few miles to the southeast of this location, they are another cold war relic for discussion later. The IBM buildings were a major computer research and development site in the 1950s until it closed in 1992. It was assumed that the Soviets had several spy satellites trying to steal secrets from the area, and the IBM facility was a primary nuclear target.
Blast baffle for generator cooling air intake
The microwave relay site has 12-inch re-enforced concrete walls. The ventilation air intakes have blast baffles to prevent a pressure wave (from a nuclear explosion) from blowing the ventilation equipment off of its mounts.
pneumatic actuator panel seals all outside openings with steel blast doors
All of the outside openings were able to be sealed with steal blast deflectors using a pneumatic control panel located in the control room. There was a five-minute timer, presumably to allow the HVAC units to be secured before the doors were closed. They were heavy gauge steel shutters designed to deflect the pressure wave of a nuclear explosion. Since this is an earlier building, it is likely that it is built to a 2 PSI pressure wave spec. Newer buildings were built to 20 or even 50 PSI. This microwave relay site would not have withstood a direct hit from a nuclear warhead, especially the higher-yield warheads that came later on.
Water chillers for HVAC system
There were three large water chillers to provide cooling to the HVAC units. Since this was the 1950’s all of the electronic equipment would have had tubes, which would have generated a lot of heat while operating. There were two loops in the HVAC system. The refrigerant loop, which ran between these units and the huge condensers on the second-floor roof, and the chilled water loop which ran between these units and the air handlers located in various parts of the building.
There is a bomb shelter in the basement. I found a couple of olive drab cans of civil defense water laying around. The lights were not working at the bottom of the stairs, so I chose not to go into the bomb shelter itself.
Stairs going down to the bomb shelter
“Okay everybody, the missiles are on their way, so let’s head down these stairs and pray”
There were two diesel generators, one was 325 KW which could run the entire building. The other was a 200 KW which could run the critical building functions. The fuel storage consisted of two 10,000-gallon tanks buried in the ground outside. Each steel fuel tank had a cathodic protection circuit. Basically, a small negative electrical current was passed to the steel tank to keep it from rusting. Apparently, it worked because when the tanks were removed in 2000 after 45 years in the ground, the primer was still on the outside of the tank.
Electrical switch gear, part of power company sub-station
The building has its own power substation. The electricity from the utility company comes off the pole at 13,800 volts and goes to a large step-down transformer on a pad outside. From there 480 volts is fed to this switch panel, where it is routed to motors loads or other step-down transformers within the building.
Frame room floor, equipment removed
On the main floor, there were rows and rows of wire terminal equipment, microwave transmitters, receivers, and data and RF multiplexers in racks. The room in the above picture is about 10,000 square feet, there is another 6,000 square feet beyond the plastic heat barrier. This microwave gear received and transmitted data from Albany and Germantown to the north; Poughkeepsie, Putnam Valley, Ellenville, and Spring Valley to the south. All of that equipment is gone now, replaced by empty space.
Now the whole place is a little creepy.
There are about 500 copper wire pairs of telephone cables that came into various parts of the building to carry the DS-1 and DS-3 circuits that interfaced with the TELCO office in Kingston.
All in all, this was a serious building, no expense was spared in the construction and equipment outfitting. The entire building is shielded with copper mesh screens embedded in the concrete walls. There were redundant systems on top of redundant systems, something that you do not see these days, even in government buildings such as emergency operation centers (EOCs) and 911 call centers.
