Honor Thy Ancestors Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Two technologies that may have passed their prime can be found nearby.
Rapid River fire tower (94ft high), one of four towers still standing in Lake of the Woods County, was built in 1941 and was last staffed in about 2001. Modern fire control relies on aerial surveillance but fire towers were a very effective method of fire detection in their day.
Two miles north on Hwy 72 was a tower which was a critical part of navigation before GPS technology supplanted it. LORAN-C (LOng RAnge Navigation) was originally developed by the US Coast Guard to provide radionavigation service for U.S. coastal waters and was later expanded to include complete coverage of the continental U.S. as well as most of Alaska. Uses also included a universal time standard signal for clock synchronization. The station, built in 1979, was one of 24 U.S. LORAN-C stations which provide better than 0.25 nautical mile accuracy for suitably equipped users. At 10,000 volts, 800 kW pulse transmitting power, the tower, was part of the Great Lakes and North Central chains of towers that worked in concert to aid navigation. Once 725 feet tall, it was about eight times the height of the fire tower, the size of a fifty story building or half as tall as the Sears Tower in Chicago. How would you have liked to change the light bulbs up there?
Unfortunately, boaters on Lake of the Woods were not able to use LORAN because they were too close to the powerful tower. The tower was a landmark for area residents as they returned from the south. Some people claimed to be able to see it 30+ miles away.
President Barack Obama's FY 2010 budget supported the termination of outdated systems and specifically cited the terrestrial based LORAN-C system therefore this tower ceased broadcasting on February 8, 2010 and all 24 towers in the USA were turned off by October 1, 2010. This tower was taken down in March 2012. Thank you Coast Guard for maintaining this system established in 1957.
Additional challenge: log the nearby benchmark.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Qba'g fgenl gbb sne sebz gur ebpx.
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