Talk:AN/URC-117 Ground Wave Emergency Network

Ionosphere damage from ions, ions cause EMP, EMP doesn't affect ions much

EMP can damage electronics, but the damage done to the ionosphere is through gamma rays releasing massive quantities of charged particles, specifically by knocking off electrons in the general direction from the explosion. It is true that the gamma rays can be seen as electromagnetic radiation as well, but EMP generally refers to lower energy waves. The EMP pulse that damages electronics is generated indirectly by charge accelerating spirally along magnetic field lines, lasts under a millisecond, and easily penetrates the atmosphere. Gamma rays are stopped by the atmosphere, may damage orbiting satellites, cause auroras, but can't do damage to ground level electronics. It's the persistence of ionization that messes up the refractive properties of the atmosphere and block radio propagation for as long as hours. There may me some ionization due to EMP but it's minor compared to the direct effect of X-rays. After the 1st pulse, 2 more follow, from secondary electron-atom collisions and the distortion of earth's magnetic field, but their effects respectively resemble those of lightning and geomagnetic storms, much milder. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1964IAUS...18...47O and Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse Spamhog (talk) 11:00, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Coordinates questionable in chart

At least one of the station locations in the table, Goldvein, VA, isn't even in Virginia. Crcwiki (talk) 15:52, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Pictures missing

Add pictures of sites! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.49.81.99 (talk • contribs)

Structure

The article need structuring. Headers could be: "History", "Technical characteristics", "Operation" etc. Sv1xv (talk) 08:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Been editing GWEN for the last couple days now. Getting references and more pictures. Want to give it a go at editing? - my mind is a bit fried from collating the information? TDRSS (talk) 17:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

HEMP/EMP?

I feel that HEMP isn't adequately defined as high-altitude EMP in this article before the abbreviation is used. Maybe it's worth fixing? 69.37.165.17 (talk) 03:08, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

redirect

Currently GWEN is a redirect to Gwen, which is a disambiguation page. that makes no sense. If people are typing in all caps they mean the acronym. There's no reason to redirect to a page about the name "Gwen," etc. AT ALL. Rifter0x0000 (talk) 16:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Frequencies

The list of frequencies in the table can't be right. GWEN operated in the 150-175 kHz range (as stated in the main article and in reference documents), but all of the frequencies in the table are in the 200 and 300 kHz range. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.150.102.227 (talk) 22:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect pictures

Some of the pictures on the page are not GWEN towers - they are cellular towers. LF antennas do not have directional panels. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.97.181.114 (talk) 19:33, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with this as well. Any towers by Crown Castle or registered to them are not a part of this system. They are obviously cell towers. Just look up the FCC ids. At least the image with the FCC tower registration number of 1244570 should be removed. Any other images from that same tower should probably also be removed.38.98.1.228 (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Any photos need to be verifiable as former GWEN sites by reliable sources. There are too many conspiracy theorists wanting to use Wikipedia to spread rumors about GWEN towers being everywhere. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:09, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup, January 2017

I've completed a fair amount of cleanup and restructuring. As mentioned, there was a lot of unverifiable and dubious data, including many photos that obviously have nothing to do with the GWEN network (it looked as if someone had added information to make it seem as if a wide number of existing cell tower sites and equipment were part of GWEN). - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:29, 25 January 2017 (UTC)