by Penny Mio
editor

The Baudette Loran-C station officially went on air on April 15, 1980 and it is set to go off air on February 8, 2010. It officially ends the military connection to Baudette that started with the Air Force Base from 1957 to 1978 and the Coast Guard station from 1979 to 2010.
Planning for the station began in the early 1970s when the Great Lakes Loran was forming.
LORAN stands for LOng RAnge Navigation.
Baudette was chosen over Ely, International Falls and Williams; Ely because of iron ore and other minerals that might interfere with the signal, International Falls because of the large airport, and Williams because there was no housing for the men at the station.
In 1979, a crew from Ellis Tower from Fort Lauderdale was hired to put up the tower. On that crew was Lee Paradise, who explained last week that the tower was assembled and painted on the ground in sections. Then each section was raised using cables and motor that was in the back of a pickup truck.  Other equipment was brought in from Georgia and New York for the job.
Crews went up and down the tower using cables or in an open elevator. By September the tower was up, but someone needed to stay behind and do touch-ups on the paint. Paradise was that person, and after the job was done he stayed for good.
Once the trucks and equipment were gone, it would take him two hours to climb the tower, because safety regulations required the climber to stop and rest at regular intervals. Painting was done using a glove and dipping it in paint.
Even on an 80-degree day, it’s still cold at the top, Paradise said. But the view is spectacular, offering views all the way to the lake and across the bog, including daily sightings of moose.
When the tower was going up, the brick building was complete but no Coast Guard personnel was at the station except for an inspector. The inspector wore silk gloves and literally inspected every inch of the guide wires for frays or imperfections.
When the LORAN station was commissioned in 1978, it was the last in the Great Lakes navigation system. Capt. Richard Bauman welcomed guests to the opening ceremony. Rear Admiral Anthony Fugaro handled the official commissioning and delivered the main address. The commanding officer was Wayne Hempeck.
The completion of the 720-foot tall tower and station enabled ships on the Great Lakes to determine their positions with incredible accuracy. The signal was transmitted at 700-kilowatts power and picked up by LORAN receivers on boats on the Great Lakes. Using the signals from at least two other towers allowed boaters to triangulate their positions.
The signal began transmission in October 18, 1979, but was not official until the next April.
A Baudette Region article from 1982 says that when the tower first went online it blocked out all AM radio station signals for miles around the tower. The Coast Guard developed and installed a pair of filters that dampened the signal in the immediate area without affecting the quality or power over a distance.
When the Coast Guard personnel started moving to Baudette, the U.S. Air Force had just announced that it was closing the local base. A 27-unit housing development opened up and the Coast Guard took ownership of eight of the empty houses.
Hempeck served until July of 1982, when he transferred command to Lynn DeHaan.
In September 1984, Lynn DeHaan turned over command to James Rundlett. DeHaan had been in Baudette for two years and was moving on to administration in Washington, D.C.
A 40-day project to install new equipment was going on at the station in the summer of 1985. The project was to replace most of the electronic gear with solid state devices. The changeover would allow the Coast Guard to reduce the number of people stationed in Baudette. At that time there were about 12 people stationed in Baudette at a time.
One of the crewmembers who came to help with the equipment was Lynn DeHann, who had been commander and whose parents lived in Baudette.
The project cost was about $2 million. The former transmitter was from 1947 or 1948 and came from a station in Alaska when the Baudette station was built. When the tower and building were constructed in the late 1970s, the solid state devices were new, so they were not installed at the Baudette location.
Serving at the station during that time was Bill Langrehr, who came in 1982. When Rundlett handed over the command, there was a series of changeovers. A.A. Alpers was first in command but left the station for a while, leaving Langrehr as acting commander.
Then a first class officer was acting commander for about three months before another James Chandler came in. He was here for about a year when Langrehr was told he would be the next commander.
He took over in 1988 and would oversee two future commanders, his successor John Hartline and Tom Hanson.
When Hartline received command of the Baudette station in 1992, Langrehr was the longest serving person at the Baudette location, with nine years. Hartline served his four years in command and passed it on to Casey Hooper.
April 30th, 1998, Hooper turned over command to Mark Huntelman and officially retired as part of the ceremony.
In 2002 Casey Jones was named commander of the station. A little less than a year later, Tom Hanson became the commander, on his second tour at the Baudette station.
Hanson served for five years, relinquishing command to Aaron Urbanawiz. With his total years at the Baudette station, Hanson passed up Langrehr to become the longest serving person at the Baudette location.
Both Langrehr and Hanson continue to live in Baudette today.
After one year, Urbanawiz left for another assignment and Marin Kaczmar became commander.
Through the years the station received many awards for 99 percent or better accuracy and dependability. In the early years, the station was staffed 24 hours a day by at least two persons. After the upgrades in the mid-1980s the staff number went down to four.
Evaluation of the LORAN system in a world of global positioning satellites began in 2007. At that time the Coast Guard took comments on the system.
Only two years later, President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget supported the termination of outdated systems and specifically cited the terrestrial-based North American Loran-C system as such an example. The president did not seek funding for the Loran-C system in fiscal year 2010. Termination was also supported through the enactment of the 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill.
This decision, which will begin plans to cease broadcasting the North American Loran-C signal Feb. 8, 2010, will result in the decommissioning of two Ninth Coast Guard District Loran-C stations: Seneca, NY, and Baudette, Minn.