Jim Creek Naval Radio Station

Antenna

Much of the site is devoted to the enormous overhead wire antenna array that is necessary to efficiently radiate the VLF waves. The antenna, shown above, consists of ten catenary cables, 5,640–8,700 ft (1,719–2,652 m, 1.1–1.6 miles) long, suspended in a zigzag pattern over the valley between Wheeler mountain and Blue mountain on twelve 200 ft. towers on the mountains' crests. Each cable receives energy from a vertical cable attached at the center, which drops down to the valley floor where it is fed by one of two "bus" transmission lines which extend along the valley from the transmitter building in the center.

This type of antenna, called a "valley-span" antenna, functions as a capacitively top-loaded electrically short monopole antenna. The vertical cables are the main radiating elements, and the horizontal cables serve to add capacitance to the top of the antenna, to increase the power radiated. The antenna is divided into 2 sections of 5 elements, each fed with its own transmission line. These normally operate together as one antenna, but can operate separately so one section can be shut down for maintenance without interrupting transmission. The floor of the valley under the antenna is covered with an elaborate network of buried cables that serve as the ground system for the transmitter.

This station is part of the command system which, in the event of a nuclear war, would transmit launch orders to US ballistic missile submarines in the Pacific fleet. The station was listed as a potential target for a Russian attack by a Russian state media report in early 2019.