[GreenKeys] Fwd: That's not a RTTY station........

[Kevin Anderson]

I am late coming to this thread.  Or more correctly I should note that it had shifted its focus...

The two Google Map sites that "E" points to are the paired sites for what is known as "Offutt Global," part of what is currently called the High Frequency Global Communications System (HFGCS).  The transmitter site is at Elkhorn, Nebraska ("Offutt Communications Annex #2), and the receiver site is at Schribner, Nebraska ("Offutt Communications Annex #3" that, yes, was a former WWII army airfield, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribner_State_Airport ).

HFGCS (also called GLOBECOM by some, which is an older name) is the HF ("shortwave") equivalent to the very low frequency sites that Nick was pointing to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Global_Communications_System

There are similar looking sites out in Maryland and in California, with the California transmitter site being the Navy's Davis transmitter site and the receiver site not too far away in Lincoln. I first learned of this network actually from my son about eight years ago, who, as a member of the Communications Squadron at Beale Air Force Base at the time, actually had to escort contractors out to the Lincoln receiver site a few times while they did maintenance on the system.

At one time, back in the very early 1990s, I used to receive facsimile weather maps over radio that were broadcast by the U.S. Air Force from the Elkhorn transmitter site, back before first satellite, and then the internet, took over as the preferred means of distribution.  What was nice about these Air Force weather charts at the time (as compared to the Coast Guard weather charts that were also broadcast) is that they were of North America and the U.S. itself, intended for use by other air force bases, rather than of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and therefore useful to a land-locked geography professor as I was at that time, and actually provided a wide range of useful forecasting and analysis charts, including full Northern Hemisphere charts of the jet stream. Most of those charts were pulled right from the Weather Bureau DIFAX charts that were still going out over the teletype circuits. But, alas, that was all stopped around mid-1990, as part of the modernization of the National Weather Service and Air Force weather programs.

Kevin Anderson, K9IUA
Dubuque, Iowa