$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone | Hacker News Reader

$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone

washingtonpost.com

102 pointsjamessun71 comments

It sounds like it is smack in the middle of a large area where Broadcast TV, WiFi, and cellphones aren't allowed. Given the prevalence of those things in everyday life you wonder how that effects the properties value regardless of the location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...

Broadcast TV can be replaced with cable, WiFi can be (mostly) replaced with a good ethernet network in the home - it would have to be properly wired and I doubt powerline would cut it.

However no cell phones. I'm guessing landlines and VoIP are popular.

Kids would go berserk in a setting like that, can you imagine? No Instagram, Snapchat, games, and on and on. Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket? They only have USB ports AFAIK.

Any parent with kids >10yo who moves there with them will soon wish they had torn down the house and built a Faraday cage they can put Wifi into instead...

> Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket?

Yup. I've done this with my Nexus 5. You need a USB OTG cable and a USB Ethernet adapter. Dorkiest thing ever, walking around the apartment trailing an Ethernet cable, but page-loads were pretty snappy, all right...

Neat. I should've guessed that there would be a USB adapter. Is it plug-and-play or does it require additional drivers?

I'm pretty sure it was plug-and-play. It's actually kind of cool how many USB peripherals Android natively supports -- keyboards, mice, flash drives, etc...

Of course; under the hood it's just Linux. Though Google has replaced most of the userspace drivers and stuff are still the same good old Linux ones.

I lived in the NRQZ and had no knowledge of the fact until maybe a year ago, long after I left. Some of the commenters here are ridiculous; we had cell phones, wifi, microwaves, radios, and probably anything else people here have come up with. I'll grant that the cell service was never great, but I always figured that was more a function of living in a pretty rural place (town of 20k).

There is wifi at Snowshoe. I'm sure you could get away with home wifi if you kept it low-power. AT&T has even nerfed its network to allow limited cell phone usage. More: http://fusion.net/story/243321/wtf-wifi-in-the-green-bank-wv...

If you make your house a faraday cage would you be allowed to use WiFi?

Microwaves are not allowed, because for the fraction of a second between you opening the door and the generator switching off there is always a tiny leakage of microwave energy - and it has actually set off radars in sensitive areas in the past. So to answer your question - probably not.

So using a microwave but always using the timer or stop button is fine?

Sure, but I guess one wouldn't be allowed in anyway.

I really have no idea why I got downvoted couple times - what I said is perfectly true:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-ov...

Edit: and now downvotes on this post, despite containing nothing else but a link. Would anyone care to explain what is going on?

I can't speak to why people downvoted the first post (I upvoted it), but it's generally frowned upon to complain about people downvoting you.

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't know where you got this idea, the NRQZ encompasses a huge area and people most definitely do have microwave ovens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...

You think that nobody in a city the size of Harrisonburg VA has a microwave?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrisonburg,_Virginia

It's within a 1 mile radius of the radio astronomy dish that petrol engined cars (spark plugs) and emitters like microwaves are banned.

You can install licensed point to point microwave radio and VHF/UHF radio systems, etc in the NRQZ, you just need to go through a coordination process.

https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt/interference-protect...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-ov...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11748758

If you did it properly, there's no way they could catch you so in practice the answer is probably yes.

EDIT: Looks like anything goes if it doesn't cause unacceptable levels of noise http://fusion.net/story/243321/wtf-wifi-in-the-green-bank-wv...

Sounds like a perfect spot for Adult Summer Camp: http://campgrounded.org

Doing some quick math, if the upkeep is $5M a year, and you do camp 50 weeks a year, it could work out. With 80 homes you could probably easily house 400 people per camp, each camp is 1/2 a week, so you'd need about $110 per person towards upkeep. Probably $100 for food, $100 for staff. It look like they charge about $700 for 3 days, so that still leaves almost $400 per person for all the stuff I didn't think of.

The question is whether you could find 400 people 100 times a year.

Transportation would be an issue too. Assuming you were targeting individuals across the nation, they would likely be flying into the nearest regional airfield. You would likely have to bus 400 people within the same 4 hour window one or twice a week, so you would have to maintain or rent a fleet of 10 buses and drivers.

Unless you were in a very big city, I don't think the taxi/uber infrastructure could handle a surge of 400 long trips within that kind of window.

Uber wouldn't be allowed, anyway. It depends on the driver having an ongoing connection. They use the GPS trail for fare calculation.

Not to be funny, but considering its location and surrounding, I don't think it's attractive as recreational facility. Maybe obesity camp, internet addiction detox camp, or perhaps isolationist religious cults.

Looks like the goal of the camp is to get away from "life"

Anyone looking to truly disconnect from the world. Being able to tell the office "I literally will not be reachable" and have it be true is wonderful.

"An array of giant parabolic dishes obscured by thick forest cover are housed on a mountain ridge just over a mile southeast of the main property. These, however, are not part of the sale."

That's one hell of a caveat!

What do you mean? A mile south would mean there are roughly 640 acres between the land being disposed of and the array. It doesn't seem to really be part of the area being sold, just a nearby property.

It's like saying that such and such skyscraper doesn't come with a house located some distance away.

That's a good point, I didn't properly imagine the scale.

They can keep the dishes. Can you imagine how much it costs to dismantle them?

Probably not that much? A scrap company would probably do it for free.

When I was about 15, my dad and I volunteered to help strip cable and waveguide off giant dishes in a decommissioned radio-free zone north of Boulder. The material was donated to a local amateur radio club and was mostly recycled as scrap metal.

I was given some wrenches, a harness, a few carabiners and some rope. I have to say, hanging off those bottom supports with nothing below me was one of the most exciting times of my life!

The dishes have considerable value if dismantled carefully and relocated for a current C, Ku and Ka band teleport operator (two way satellite services). Will likely need new feeds and all electronics. A new 16.4 meter C-band earth station dish is $165,000+.

That is the Sugar Grove NSA Listening Station. This is mentioned in the article.

Also google satellite images shows it pretty clear if you search for it. It's south of Sugar Grove.

122 acres for $1M plus $5M a year does not sound like a deal, especially given the RF ban.

That's why it's so cheap. Just building 80 homes could easily be $8 million dollars.

Aside from the NSA, who would have a need to have 80 (likely very old) homes on a 122 acres on the middle of nowhere with an RF ban. Homes make the property worth less, not more. Demolition costs alone would likely be in the millions and quick search of comparable land prices in the area shows this is over priced.

That's what the GSA is tasked with figuring out.

The higher price than the surroundings makes it obvious that they are hoping the facilities make the property worth more to the buyer.

A cult / survivalist group?

The people with "Electromagnetic hypersensitivity" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_questionable_disease...) living next door? http://theweek.com/articles/481731/west-virginias-colony-wif...:

The village of Green Bank — population 143 — has become a mecca for people who believe their lives have been disrupted by EHS. Until she moved to Green Bank, Diane Schou lived in a shielded metal cage to try and alleviate her EHS symptoms. "Living here allows me to be more of a normal person," says Schou, as quoted by BBC News. "I can be outdoors. I don't have to stay hidden"

Agreed it's not particularly cheap at all. Average cropland per-acre cost is $4k per acre, which prices 122 acres at under $500k. If you want cheap acerage in the woods you can get it for around $1k/acre - expect to spend around $150k in total.

Hell, for $1,700/ac you can buy a 160 acre plot within driving distance of Silicon Valley out by Mt. Hamilton: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Newman/5-W-of-Hwy-95360/home/22910... These old 160ac homestead plots come up for sale periodically out there and they're quite cheap. Much, much less than a three hour drive from say, Palo Alto.

Now, about that water ...

Farmland fetches $15,000-20,000 per acre around here. $1M sounds cheap, if the land is any good.

Up in Vermont you can get timberland for $1-$3k acre. After you account for the lumber the dirt looks like it has negative value.

Sure, raw land is a liability to a degree - folks could go and hurt themselves on it and sue you, etc.

Tax liability as well. Holding land and doing nothing with it costs money.

The listing says "benefits from the Williamson Act" which apparently means that the property cannot be developed for some period of time - which probably explains the low price.

The $5m a year is if you want to maintain the extensive grounds and can't beat the federal government on upkeep costs.

I imagine a savvy and well connected buyer could persuade the feds either to pay for demolition and clearing of existing facilities or to subsidize upkeep. All of this in exchange for this favor or that permission, etc.

Shit, I bet there are developers connected enough to lease or buy from Agency A and lease or sublease facilities to Agency B, creating an arbitrage opportunity.

Mark my words: the gov will end up, on a net basis, paying some rich guy to take this off their hands.

Good place for a radio telescope though. And you can probably sell observation of known radio sources to the Russians and Chinese for a bit of money; I imagine it is useful for something to know the site properties of a NSA listening station.

The people who do satellite SIGINT for non-five-eyes nations don't need to be told this, they already know. For listening to geostationary satellites it's fairly basic criteria, simply, be in a low population area that is RF quiet. The parabolic dish antennas at 9 meters+ are very, very directional.

No WiFi or microwave ovens allowed, and I would guess no cell phones. Good luck finding someone wanting to relocate their national headquarters...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio...

Maybe a chef with a cooking show?

A cooking shoe would 100% somehow manage to break an RF ban

Probably haha. I could design one which couldn't, though, as people have been cooking since before cellphones, WiFi, and microwaves. There were five-star restaurants before these. Even feedback from customers could happen over landline. So, it's at least conceivable.

There's also a lot of kooks who live there to get away from their "electromagnetic hypersensitivity"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-14887428

> Ms Schou is one of an estimated 5% of Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), which they say is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields typically created by mobile phones, wi-fi and other electronic equipment.

Similar to Snowflake, AZ:

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/snowflake/

> Some people with MCS also experience sensitivity to electricity, so some houses forgo electricity, or have it routed through a single room which can be completely shut off from the rest of the house.

It'd be worse to have the radio quiet zone and not let them live there.

Number of these people, when actually tested in a double-blind study, who have been shown to have any sensitivity or even awareness of the presence or absence of electromagnetic fields: 0

the placebo (and nocebo) effect is a hell of a thing

My favorite (probably apocryphal) anecdote about EM sensitivity: A mobile company built a new cell tower in a small town. Residents began complaining of headaches and nausea. A town meeting was called, and after hearing the complaints, a representative of the mobile company said "if it's that bad now, imagine how bad it'll be when we turn it on."

Estimated 5% of Americans? I know BBC is pretty reputable, but that seems like a very high estimate. Estimated by who?

Or you could buy approximately 20x as much land in a quiet area of Chile, where there's also very little radio traffic going on and there are much fewer strings attached. Patagonia is also one of the most beautiful spots on earth, IMHO.

There are lots of defunct military bases. Fort Ord, in Monterey, CA, was closed in 1994, and it's still underutilized. Great weather, near the beach, near a reasonably sized city, and still a tough sell.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ord

I went to high school on Fort Ord land and I think the primary reason for it being a tough sell is the unexploded ordnances. Every year we were given a presentation on how to identify old landmines and avoid them. Even with the recent cleanup efforts it's still somewhat dangerous and only the fringes of Fort Ord (where cleanup happened a while ago) are being actively developed.

Some defunct military bases are still having trouble attracting valuable industrial tenants even after 40 years, example:

Closed as an air force base in 1966 and turned over to the local government, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_County_International_Air...

Closed as an active SAC bomber air force base in 1969, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton-Sherman_Industrial_Air...

To be fair, nothing between Monterey/Seaside and Santa Cruz is very built up, and it's all very nice weather, as far as I can tell.

Given the NSA site, I wonder what the availability of commercial DWDM services is to Ashburn, VA from dark fiber owners such as level3, zayo, etc. Locations of buried 288 strand cable and raman amplifier sites would not be too difficult to discover. The US government usually doesn't build its own longhaul fiber.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Globex_Corporation

Or you could consider living amidst the Amish; it's a lot cheaper.

well oddly that isn't as true as some might believe. there is this whole ownership versus usage game that some of them play to let them "use" computers as long as they don't own them or the place where they are kept.

plus like many faiths, it depends on which exact subset you are

SCROLL JACK WARNING ARRGHGHHHHHGHHHHHHHH!!!!

Please don't do this.

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