Fort Yukon WACS Site (Fort Yukon, AK)

 military, demolished, tropospheric scatter station

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Constructed in 1957 as part of the nearby Fort Yukon Long Range Radar Site, the Fort Yukon White Alice Communications System (WACS), callsign FYU, site went operational in 1958 as a tropospheric scatter communications station in the United States Air Force telecommunication network. Linked with the rest of the WACS via a 124-mile shot to the Southwest to the Pedro Dome station outside of Fairbanks, the site was equipped with a pair of 60ft antennas with 10kW of transmission power.

Expanded in the late 1960's as part of Project Bluegrass, the Fort Yukon site was equipped with a pair of 120ft antennas with 50 kW of transmission power to link the station with the BAR-Main DEW Line located at Barter Island on the coast of the Arctic Ocean via a 250-mile shot. Once completed, Fort Yukon became the second of two direct White Alice links to the DEW Line.

Operating through the late 1970s, the sites capabilities were eclipsed by satellite communications and the facility was idled and placed into caretaker status through the 1984 shutdown of the manned mission of the Fort Yukon LRRS. Essentially abandoned thereafter, the site remained idle through 1999 when the structures were razed and landfilled and the site environmentally remediated as part of "Operation Clean Sweep". Today only the operations building of the former site remains, having been repurposed.

www.whitealice.net/