[Elecraft] K2 Aeronautical mobile

[k6se@juno.com]

Don, KD4NDB wrote:

"I worked for Collins radio in the mid 60's and they made this antenna in
the building I worked in. Although I didn't work on that project if I
remember right the wire was rolled out from a large wench with a cone on
the end of the wire. Then the plane circled and the wire would form a
helix below the plane. I think the wire was 
 about a mile long. One problem with it was the huge static charges that
would build up on the plane. I remember the cones stacked up in the
basement they were about 4 or 5 feet high each."
==========
When I was an avionics tech back in the late '50s and early '60s, I
recall many aircraft (DC3 size and up) that used trailing wire antennas
that reeled in and out of the tail of the aircraft for use on HF.  The
pilot would reel the wire in/out (motorized) until the antenna current
was maximum.  They had a small rubber cone (about 6 or 8 inches long) the
shape of a wind sock on the end of the antenna to create some drag to put
tension on the antenna, allowing it to reel out easily and to keep the
wire relatively horizontal while in flight.

One could probably rig up a similar affair operated by the "Armstrong"
method and use an SWR meter to determine when enough wire was reeled out
for the frequency in use.

BTW, I attended a school on transponders at Collins in Cedar Rapids in
1965.  I was very impressed with the facility and was interested to see
that the bench techs there had 51J receivers (similar to the amateur 75A
series of receivers) that served as frequency counters because their
tuning dials were so accurate.

73, de Earl, K6SE
66 countries on K2 #2622 and counting......