[HN Gopher] DEWLine Museum - The Distant Early Warning Radar Line
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DEWLine Museum - The Distant Early Warning Radar Line
Author : reaperducer
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-07-14 22:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dewlinemuseum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dewlinemuseum.com)
| Animats wrote:
| They could really build geodesic domes in those days. Most of the
| abandoned domes are intact, after half a century, unmaintained,
| in an Arctic climate. They're aluminum frames with Fiberglas
| panels.
|
| Geodesic domes were taken over by the "natural materials" people
| in the 1960s and 1970s. This doesn't work. Geodesic domes need
| standard manufactured components built to tight tolerances. Then
| they just bolt together. Domes built with wood and shingles do
| not work very well.[1]
|
| Google proposed to build a big geodesic dome for their HQ in
| Mountain View. It probably would have been better than what they
| did build, which looks like some kind of sports arena.
|
| [1] https://www.domerama.com/dome-basics/domebook-1-2/
| fsckboy wrote:
| Buckminster Fuller's Oldest Surviving Dome Is At The Center Of
| A Big Development Dispute (with audio)
|
| https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/03/07/buckminster-fuller-geod...
| mapt wrote:
| Bolting together at a variety of odd angles is a terrible thing
| to waterproof, and most domes do have water infiltration
| problems. You can just spray foam the whole thing, building a
| dome of polyurethane, but if you're going to do that you're
| getting very far from the ideals of that movement. Wood and
| shingles are also not isotropic materials structurally or in
| terms of how they deal with moisture.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Got to play around on a White Alice (?) station near Homer,
| Alaska maybe 40 years ago or so. It was an abandoned station on
| Ohlson Mountain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohlson_Mountain_Ai
| r_Force_Stat...).
|
| There was a huge dish pointing straight up. A friend and I walked
| around on the dish. There was a very small compartment more or
| less where the elevation axis was. The slightly creepy feeling I
| might get stuck in it kept me from going in but my friend did.
|
| Another large structure was likely a transmitter. A large surface
| with a grid of smaller antennas covering one side.
|
| Most cool to me though were the rooms with 6 foot high panels
| with all manner of analog meters, switches, lights.... Nothing
| worked of course, most everything was smashed. I wish now that I
| had brought some tools and removed as many of the components as I
| could.
|
| My overall impression was a kind of wonderment that so much money
| and effort would be expended by the U.S. government to watch for
| Soviet aircraft/missiles. So much equipment built, foundations
| poured, cinder blocks stacked...
|
| And then I suppose sophisticated satellites made it all obsolete.
| esseph wrote:
| Just so you know, that site was finally really covered over the
| past 5 years or so (haven't lived over there in a bit).
| Truckloads of gravel. I wish they would have made it a museum
| and taken care of it instead of just letting it rot!
| throw0101b wrote:
| Eventual replacement:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Warning_System
|
| An upgrade was recently announced with a collaboration with
| Australia:
|
| * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/canada-early-warning-de...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Net...
| etimberg wrote:
| Reminds me of when we used to drive past a Pinetree Line station
| every summer on the way to visit my grandparents.
| pnw wrote:
| Great site. The DYE-2 and DYE-3 stations built on the glacier
| that they just abandoned remind me of something you'd see in a
| post apocalyptic movie or game.
|
| This video shows some explorers looking around inside.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMTTjVIMWoE
|
| My other favorite Cold War site is Safeguard, a 70's era anti-
| ballistic missile system that cost six billion and was only
| operational for six months.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard...
| dboreham wrote:
| In-laws are from that immediate area. I've been inside the PAR
| which is still operational, and done some outside the fence
| viewing of the Nekoma site before it was decommissioned.
| fennec-posix wrote:
| Love the almost alien building look that the Wikipedia article
| has as the main image. So very brutalist but ultimately for
| utility.
| fennec-posix wrote:
| I think the most impressive part about these sites was the way
| they networked them together with UHF/Microwave Troposcatter
| links, which basically just scream RF into the sky and then
| listen for the small amount of energy that's reflected off the
| troposphere on the other end. (It's a little more complex than
| that)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_scatter
|
| This method was the back-bone of long distance Cold War
| communications links (As well as HF using ionospheric
| propagation) until Satellites started becoming more commonplace
| in the 70's
| blantonl wrote:
| meteor scatter communications were even more crazy and
| impressive (still in use actually)
| fennec-posix wrote:
| Had not heard of this, that's impressive.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Yup. SNOtel uses meteor bounce. They've talked about trying
| to switch to satellite or cellular, but it just doesn't make
| sense for their use case
| blantonl wrote:
| BNSF railroad also has an extensive meteor scatter radio
| system across north america that is similar to SNOtel.
| aeontech wrote:
| That sounds like stuff of science fiction, can't believe it
| works. The best part is that it works long distance without
| having to have satellites in the sky... and is probably un-
| jammable?
|
| Thanks for sharing this, so cool to learn about it!
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I once dropped in on an abandoned tropospheric scatter site I saw
| hidden in the trees while fishing in the Inside Passage of
| Alaska. Massive RF dishes the size of buildings.
|
| A couple things really stuck out for me. First, it looked like
| everyone that worked there had literally left for lunch one day
| and never came back. No orderly wind-down, just instantly
| abandoned, everything left behind. Second, they had these massive
| brass waveguides connecting the antennas to rooms of primitive
| mainframes. I found it interesting that no one had ever salvaged,
| legally or illegally, the considerable scrap metal value
| contained in those installations. These buildings have been
| abandoned since before I was born and there was literally tons of
| high-value scrap just sitting there.
|
| These places have a strange vibe, they feel ancient. No one
| really messes with these abandoned places, they are treated like
| an archaic relic or monument even though they aren't that old. It
| is sort of a surreal feeling of coming across the ruins of some
| dead civilization like some kind of sci-fi trope.
|
| Really damn cool though.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Alaska is weird. Due to transportation costs entire industries
| that would exist anywhere else don't exist there, like metal
| recycling, which is why the brass hasn't been looted.
| pests wrote:
| computer.rip has tons of great posts on topics like this
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(page generated 2025-07-15 23:02 UTC)