Historic AT&T high seas radio station to be demolished

[Fansome]

Historic AT&T high seas radio station to be demolished
By Kirk Moore on January 12, 2017

The remains of shortwave radio station WOO — for decades the Atlantic coast hub of American Telephone & Telegraph’s high seas radio service — will likely disappear in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with contractor Amec Foster Wheeler Environment & Infrastructure Inc., plans to remove more than 500 antennas and poles that stud 222 acres of salt marsh on New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay.

The site at Good Luck Point was the transmitter station for WOO, which from the early 1930s onward was a shore-to-ship critical link to U.S. bluewater and coastwise shipping. Right up to the dawn of cellular telephones in the late 20th century, mariners could place telephone calls by contacting the AT&T marine operator on VHF channels.
High seas and overseas radio operators at AT&T's New York City switchboard in 1943 handled calls through station WOO. AT&T photo.

High seas and overseas radio operators at AT&T’s New York City switchboard in 1943 handled calls through station WOO. AT&T photo.

Also known as the Ocean Gate site, the transmitter worked in tandem with a receiver site about 15 miles south on the marsh at Manahawkin, N.J. Both were part of AT&T’s national “long lines” system, along with stations KMI near San Francisco and WOM near Miami.

As technology changed and users began falling away, the stations still provided single-sideband (SSB) radiotelephone service up to February 1999 when AT&T announced it was ceasing operations. Satellite service had usurped the old manned shoreside station model, and the company was selling customers on its own Sea Call service using Inmarsat technology.

The New Jersey sites were soon abandoned, and the Good Luck Point tract was purchased in 2003 by the non-profit Trust for Public Land, to be donated to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.

Among boaters passing on Barnegat Bay, the decaying antenna array is jokingly called “the telephone pole farm.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists always wanted to clean up the site and restore the marsh to improve its value for wildlife, but never had the money.

That changed after Hurricane Sandy hit the region in October 2012. Parts of the 47,000-acre Forsythe refuge were inundated with wreckage from  flooded homes and marinas, and the wildlife service eventually got $15 million out of federal Sandy relief funding for the cleanup. Some $1.7 million of that will go to clearing the Good Luck Point site, which is getting priority with the limited funding.

Contractors will use airboats to work in the marsh and bring cut-up poles and steel in for disposal. Some poles will be left standing, for use as osprey nest platforms.

[Pigmeat]

A new osprey hunting preserve, just what this country needs! Have you applied for your permit, Al?

I remember when we were boys and taught to shoot raptors on sight. Then the nanny state took over and put the quiatus on killing the chicken killing fiends. Why they even banned DDT, which kept the things and disease spreading skeeters in check. Now Miami is a plague pit of Zika and dengue and the loony bird that caused it all, Rachael Carson, is moldering in her grave, but her man killing legacy marches on! Millions dead of malaria thanks to that bat.

That was a decent rant! It looks like on the mend from alligator gar poisoning caused by a certain counterfeit Catfish On A Stick vendor who will remain nameless, but who I've been told likes to look at giant ground sloth exhibits. There's not many of those. It's only a matter of time before I catch up with that Rascal driving fiend. Mere days and weeks. And me with new rubber band gun fresh from Cracker Barrel, heh, heh, heh....