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In Green Bank, WV is home to nine radio telescopes. In Green Bank itself (pop 123) there is no Wi-Fi or cell service.
Its the nations only quiet zone set up by the FCC in the late 50's. My house is just within the quiet zones north east corner.
I always meant to post on this.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
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Very cool. Nice people in WV. Thanks! for sharing.
Been there a few times for radio telescope workshops. Really nice place. We brought our (visual) telescopes one trip and set them up inside the gated area (very dark there), but couldn't drive our vehicles in since the large telescope picks up interference from spark plugs, so we used one of their Checker cabs, which are diesel and have glow plugs instead of spark plugs.
There is a star party down there every year which I need to get to one of these days. It's about a six-hour drive from my house in KY to there; not too bad.
Yep, very little ambient light in the square due to small population. Great for sky watching. Yes no ignition noise from spark allowed. Signs everywhere. I cannot transmit !y mobile ham rig near there either.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
I saw a TV show that documented this zone a couple of years ago and all I could think was how wonderful it would be to not have a cell phone. For all the reasons we already know.
Indeed. Too bad the electrical grid is so noisy. As a ham radio operator I always look forward to a power outage only for the fact that the bands become quiet.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
Awe-D,
Thanks for posting. Very interesting and I had no idea such a thing even existed. What I'm not sure of after reading is whether foil hats are more or less a necessity there. Kidding of course. It must certainly create some inconveniences for those living there. Wonder why that area was chosen versus the middle of bumf?ck Utah or some other place in the vast nothingness of the US West?
Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. Drive through West Virginia and you will find more evidence of his remarkable ability to bring federal funding home to WV.
Damn! He sure has a LOT of stuff named after him. Although I suspect he's not the reason for the NRQZ being there. According to the Wiki on NRQZ it was established in 1958 to protect the scopes at Green Bank and Sugar Grove. That predates his tenure in the Senate by quite a while.
Very Impressive.
There are 27 radio telescope there, mounted on rail cars.
I attended there back in '87-'88 :)
I went there from '78 to '80.
(Man, that was a loonnngggg time ago.)
Yep, Socorro NM, 50 miles from water, and half a mile from hell as we used to say! ;-)
Did you ever take the tour of the VLA?
I did, and it was pretty cool.
Remembering back on it, and thinking about all those banks of computers, (the size of refrigerators!), that used tape spools, is now pretty funny.
VLA was one of the few things in the area I never managed to visit - and I quite regret it! Especially on days when they were set up in the close configuration.
Still have some nifty things pulled out of F4s & other planes out in the artillery range. ;)
I ended up doing civil engineering and land surveying.
(My lifespan will probably be greatly lengthened by not getting "slabbed" in the mines, as a couple of my friends were. Yikes!!!)
So, did you ever end up climbing "M" mountain for that stupid initiation?
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I couldn't tell you why its there, my guess is politics. The ban is just a small part of the square not the whole square. Next time that cell company commercial shows their map in red you'll see that part of eastern WV is blank. Even if there were no ban there wouldn't be cell coverage, hardly anyone lives there. Even my large county only has 22,000 people,all two lane roads and only two traffic lights. Its a temperate rain forest area too. Mountains and trees and almost no flat land.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
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