Hawklaw Traditional Cache
Kryten: Site now under development.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This cache is a replacement for one I foolishly allowed to lapse.
It is located to the north of Cupar on Hawklaw Hill because it was here in 1937 that the British Government instructed the GPO to construct a secret radio listening station. See www.secretscotland.org.uk for other secret places of this type.
This station was part of a network known as "Y" intercept stations which also included Brora, Whitchurch and St Albans. During the early months of the second world war, the staff here were tasked with locating what were known as "meacons" which were thought to be Luftwaffe navigational beacons installed at secret locations within the UK. In this they were entirely unsuccussful because the meacons did not exist.
The station then moved on to the task of intercepting German Enigma traffic and in this they were considerably more successful. Shifts of local women were recruited and trained to receive and transcribe morse code twenty four hours a day, seven days a week three hundred and sixty five days a year. Their training was faster than that of other radio operators because they did not have to learn how to use a morse key, they would never transmit. Although this building has masqueraded for fifty years as a Post Office high frequency radio station it has never transmitted anything and has always operated as a listening post for GCHQ and it's predecessors.
After the war the station was incorporated into the American Signal Intelligence (SigInt) network and began to concentrate on the reception of machine traffic such as telephone, telex, radar, telemetry, and other signals emanating from behind the Iron Curtain. Eventually in 1988 the United States moved over to intelligence gathering by satellite and the building became redundant.
There have been various attempt to develop the site with successful planning applications for a children's centre and later an old people's home, but these were never followed through. The latest application for ten houses was refused, so here the building sits, behind it's 20 foot high fence, abandoned for over 20 years.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Haqre fgbar oruvaq gerr.