Radio/wireless antenna

Ray · 16 April 2006, 02:01 PM

I’ve got a question on how they rigged the antenna for airborne radio/wireless sets used in WW1. I stumbled across a web page that mentioned using the existing support struts on the aircraft as the antenna. It was one of those link off a link off a link things and I don’t know how credible the source is. I poked through previous posts but didn’t catch anything about the mounting. While I’d bet it was tried I would also bet it wasn’t too successful, but just curious if anyone could amplify, sorry couldn’t resist, on this.

MikeW · 16 April 2006, 02:41 PM

Ray,

the RE8 used to trail a wire out the back, it was held on a spool and simply unwound and then wound back in when finished This has cropped up here before so the actual length of the antenna may well have been mentioned. Must have been a half wavelength or something - my electromagnetic theory is a bit crap after all these years!

A search of the archive might turn it up.

17 April 2006, 09:40 AM

Right. Must be a multiple or divisor by 2 to work. I.e. it's the wavelength, or, half it, or double it but, the shorter you go, the shorter the range, typically.

Wooden struts woudn't be much good as antennae but, they'd provide convenient mounts for the wire. Apparently, it was a criminal noob mistake to fail to wind up your trailing antenna. Doing that would likely result in "severe chastisement" from the CO.

F=MA

jempie · 17 April 2006, 01:32 PM

Hi!

The antenna's wether it was on a zeppelin or plane wireless istallation were in general manually winched out and in!
There was a spool with the antenna cables !
By planes it went to tail into the slipstream of the fuselage....
In case of emergency landing, and there wasn't time anymore to winch in, in general it didn't be dangerous to the plane and pilot...
I have such device into a Roland CII on photo...
But I think to have been reading that by times also metal framewotk parts of a plane could be used in addition to the antenna (???)

vbr

Jempie

Ray · 17 April 2006, 03:35 PM

Thanks for the info. It would help if I said what I mean. The support wires was what I was asking about. I had always assumed they trailed a wire out the back, but this web page made reference to using support wires for receiving. I couldn’t see that working very well, unless blind luck allowed you to hit a correct length on the wire and was too lazy to do the math and come up with a correct length. I assumed it was just a test that didn’t work but figured I would ask since I’ve been wrong before.