Wullenweber Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

Geocaching HQ Admin: Archived at the request of property owner

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Hidden : 6/19/2012
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size: other (other)

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Geocache Description:


At this location south of Bondville there used to be a "ring of poles" that was properly known as the "wide aperture direction finder" or "Wullenweber direction finder." All that is left here is the field which contained an elaborate radio antenna system that was developed for the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and 60s by the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Illinois under the direction of Professor Edgar Hayden.

The Wullenweber Array

The Wullenweber consisted of a ring of 120 vertical monopole antennas, effective in the frequency band of 2-20 MHz. The tall wooden poles you see in the picture supported a circular screen of vertical wires within the ring of antennas. In operation, 40 contiguous dipoles at a time were connected to a radio receiver at the center of the ring, thus forming a highly directive receiving antenna array. By means of some very elaborate electronics which connected successive antennas sequentially around the ring, the receiving beam was swept around all points of the compass. By monitoring the output of the radio receiver as the array was scanned, the direction of arrival of a particular radio signal could be determined.

The Navy eventually built a worldwide network of such Wullenweber direction finders. By correlating the measurements from two or more of them, the location of a particular radio transmitter (and thus of the ship or installation containing it) could be determined.

When I was an undergrad I used to have to come out to this area every day over the summer for my job.  The remnants of the wullenweber were still visible at that time and my roommates and I were convinced that this was a device to communicate with aliens. The antenna array has since all been removed (but you can still see the ring from a satellite image).  I thought it would be neat to place a cache out here, but could only locate it by the road because of private property.  The cache is not too difficult of a find, but you may need tweezers to sign the log.

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