RSOC Property

After a long year of negotiations, research, meetings, coordination, and testing of patience, we successfully entered into a lease with the State of Alaska for the former FCC Monitoring Station located at 6721 Raspberry Road effective 1/17/2018. We have control of about 3 acres within the security fencing.

In April 2013 the GSA described the property as: 131.02 acres w/3 buildings, main bldg. = 2,554 sf.; monitoring bldg. = 2,400 sf.; garage= 1,900 sf.

The building with the peaked roof is the oldest building on the property. It is about 40′ by 32′ it has the Operation room, a full kitchen, a restroom and a full basement.

The RSOC is located just South of the East-West runway at Ted Stevens International Airport (ANC). Looking at an aerial photo of the area, you can see the previous locations of rhombic and beverage antennas in addition to the circular areas where the towers were. There is about 129 acres of land that we can get access to.

There are coaxial cables still in place, leading from the Ops Building. We have used Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) settings on our test equipment to determine that some of these cables are over 1,000 feet long. We believe that there are reinforced concrete blockhouse and tower foundations in these clearings. There are also rumors of some huge grounding mats buried just below ground.

Wullenweber antennas have been mentioned. That quickly leads to the AN/FLR-9, of which only 8 were built, the last active one is less than 9 miles north at Elmendorf, AFB.

The dashed green line shows the approximate boundary between the Maidenhead Grid Square BP41 on the left and BP51 on the right. BP41 is a rare grid square. If we really wanted to, we could count the number of houses in grid square BP41 in Anchorage. Grid square BP51 has hundreds of hams living in it.

Proposed South Airpark Development

IC Alaska/NorthLink Aviation’s land lease and development of Lot 15, Block 23, consisting of approximately 120 acres  on the south side of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. This development consists of:

  • 11 hardstands designed to allow aircraft to power-in and power-out
  • Air cargo warehouse
  • Dual-hydrant fueling system at each hardstand
  • Infrastructure to recover and recycle glycol used for deicing aircraft
  • Office space for customers and operations

US Army Corps of Engineers Public Notice of Application for Permit POA-2022-00136 June 14, 2022

Anchorage Daily News Article on 2022/7/31
Neighbors push for changes to project that would expand international cargo operations at Anchorage airport

Back to antennas

Note that there was a rhombic antenna on the South side of Rasberry Road. We have heard that the cables running under the road were severed when the Army moved the Nike missiles out of the launch complex located in what is now Kincaid Park to the West of us. Something about the safety of ballistic missiles and possible RF energy.

We have about 3 acres inside the security fence. We have to be careful when we leave the driveway gate open. Sometimes moose follow the fence on the south side, and turn into the property. It is more difficult to get them out. We have seen bears on the north side of our lot.

There is a 45’ AB105 tower on the north side of the building. In Sptember of 2018 we rented a 65′ crane to mount a SteppIR yagi to the tower.

When most homeowners in Alaska see something like this in the backyard of a property, they immediately think “septic system”! In our case, it is a cable vault.
View of the RSOC from Raspberry Road as you approach from the main part of Anchorage.
Entrance to the RSOC property when the vehicle gate is open. You will need to slow down from the 35 MPH speed limit on Raspberry Road. When the gate is closed, there is enough room to safely pull off of Raspberry Road.

 

Ham radio always works. We can’t say the same for the gate opener, so we have to keep the area around the people gate open to keep the property accessible.

Sept 7, 2017

Dave Heimke (AL7LO), member of the club’s Building Committee, reported at the club meeting last Friday that there have been recent developments in our efforts to secure occupancy for our club at the former FCC Monitoring station on Raspberry Road. We are now discussing a rental/lease rate that appears to be in an acceptable range. Since Friday’s announcement, we have been advised by the Airport that they are actively working to move the process through their required channels for approval. They expect this process to take about 2-3 weeks. After that, the next steps will be to receive the FAA’s approval to use the building for a non-aeronautical purpose, then issue a 30-day public notice, and finally, to pen an actual lease agreement.

Jan 18, 2018

We did it! After a long year of negotiations, research, meetings, coordination, and testing of patience, we successfully entered into a lease with the State of Alaska for the former FCC Monitoring Station located at 6721 Raspberry Road effective 1/17/2018.

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