[Spooks] V2, M8, RHC on Google Earth

[Utility World (Hugh Stegman)]

Google Earth recently added a high-resolution aerial picture of the Havana
area, and it's become quite the pastime to poke around looking for stuff.
One good area is south and west of Havana near a little town named Bauta,
which has a lot of military bases (and, according to one poster, a no-tell
motel).  Various people have posted place marks to Google's BBS identifying
what they think they see.

Well, if you go to 22 degrees 57 minutes 2 seconds north and 82 degrees 32
minutes 41 seconds west, and zoom in to about the 3685 foot level, you will
find a pretty obvious transmitter building in the middle of a very large
antenna farm.  Nobody's marked it, and I didn't either because Google Earth
tries to hijack your browser if you start an account, and I wouldn't let it.

Unfortunately, aerial photography flattens things out and towers never show
up well, but at least here they are casting shadows.  Also you see the
generator off to the left, a storage area, and a lot of little dirt roads
out to clearings that might or might not still have antennas in them.  To
the west there's a microwave tower (identifiable by its shadow on the
ground) and an access road with a guard gate.

This is quite the facility.  I wonder if I've found Radio Havana Cuba.

Another guy has marked something he suspects is V2/M8.  I don't know if he's
right or not.  There are definitely rather odd patterns on the field that
might or might not be holding up wire beams or antenna arrays.  They're kind
of teardrop shaped, and note the high towers in the middle.  I thought I
also saw a microwave tower, but I think it's actually an AC transmission
line.

Finally someone else has marked what he thinks is the remains of the closed
Lourdes sigint base, but I agree with another poster that he's too far to
the north.  You go south and a bit west, and there is something that sure
looks like a group of low buildings being eaten by the hurricanes and
tropical weather, and a baseball field that's been turned back to
agricultural use.  The infield still shows up.  It's definitely an abandoned
military/government facility of some sort.

(You do not have a military base in Cuba without a ball field.  You just
don't.)

-hugh