[Elecraft] OT: US Signal Corps rhombic book

[EricJ]

The last year of my enlistment was spent as one of three operators 
selected to reopen K2USA in 1964. General "Duffy" Brown, a ham, was 
embarrassed to discover that the station was boarded up and couldn't 
participate in traffic concerning the AK earthquake. I left my slot as a 
crypto instructor at the Signal School for this opportunity. Gen. Brown 
assigned the task to a Major whose name escapes me (Norm something). He 
was our CO. SFC Wm (Scotty) Scot was in charge, SP5 Jim Dishaw and I 
were operators. But since we were all hams, Scotty "found" some non-ham 
radio operators on post who handled all of our MARS obligations (using 
Studio 2 in the photos), leaving the three of us to play ham radio with 
studios full of KWM-2As , S-Lines, some Hallicrafters, etc. Most of our 
time was spent troubleshooting and repairing the equipment to get it 
operational. The KWM-2As we liberated from various sources on Fort Monmouth.

I sat in a sling on the end of a crane atop every freakin' one of those 
90' telephone poles getting the Telex monoband beams operational. I 
didn't like that part much.

The rhombic was sometimes used for phone patches to SE Asia, but the 
beams usually worked better. I can't remember what the rhombic was 
terminated on at the time. I believe it was changed later. I used to 
break into QSOs between a couple VKs talking ground wave who were 
discussing how the band had closed. It was sometimes a magic antenna, 
but not always.

BTW, the license trustee, Mike Reason (W2EXU) was a local civilian who 
hung out at the MARS station and helped out a lot. He's a really nice 
guy who later made his career in civil service there at Fort Monmouth. 
My wife and I visited with him on a motorcycle trip in 1985. I having 
talked to him in a long while, but maybe you met him when you were there.

Eric
KE6US


On 5/16/2014 2:04 PM, Mike Markowski wrote:
> Sorry, gang, seems I posted my last note as html which I was told was 
> stripped resulting in an empty message.  Original follows.
> =====================
>
> Hi all,
>
> Are any interested in a pdf of
>
>   "Construction of a Rhombic Receiving Antenna," US Army Signal Corps, 
> March 20, 1943
>
> It's 37 pages long, 15 pages of which are text and the rest tables & 
> drawings, and is7.3 MBytes.  It lays out the heavy duty design of 
> rhombics as built by the then-US War Dept, not a backyard ham antenna 
> project!  But a ham or club lucky enough to have enough land and spare 
> change might make use of it.  Also, it contains no theory whatsoever. 
> "Rhombic Antenna Design," by AE Harper, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 
> 1941 is a good and similar vintage companion in that regard.  Harper's 
> report also contains construction details.
>
> I've mentioned it before on this list, but before US Army Ft. 
> Monmouth, NJ closed a few years ago I enjoyed using their one 
> surviving rhombic of the 2 originals.  Thinking of how much fun that 
> was got me reading up on rhombics recently.  Some photos of that shack 
> just prior to shut down: http://udel.edu/~mm/ham/monmouth/
>
> 73,
> Mike ab3ap
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