𝐄𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲
The Egelsbach Transmitter Facility, a US communications and SIGINT station, is located in a wooded area near Egelsbach.
The site has been used by the United States Armed Forces (US Department of Defense) since the end of World War II.
The current owner is the Wiesbaden Headquarters of the US Land Forces in Europe (7th US Army).
The system is used to guide and control communications in military areas of operation.
Protected by barbed wire and a fence, there are huge antenna systems and company buildings on the approx. 30 hectare open space.
The site is guarded by the US military police and local security services.
There are 20 mostly logarithmic-periodic shortwave antennas (horizontally polarized) from TCI International on the site.
There are now eight large and small radomes. Microwave radio relay systems are located on mast structures.
Two of these microwave dishes point in the direction of what was then the Rhein-Main Air Base.
While other US military facilities were being shut down or downsized in the 2000s, expansion work was taking place on the ETF's premises. In 2011, for example, the five-meter radome was built.
In 2003, a ZDF documentary raised the suspicion that the system was used to broadcast programs from the number channel Cynthia.
This was never confirmed by the US military, but the programs in the vicinity of the site can be received with a receiver without an antenna, which indicates a significant signal strength of the shortwave signal.
I also once heard of the Echelon global spy network, run by intelligence services from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in connection with this facility.