[Milsurplus] German Vehicle "Frame Antenna", again

Ryan Gill rmgill at mindspring.com
Tue May 5 09:14:01 EDT 2009


At 9:21 AM -0700 5/5/09, Hue Miller wrote:
>A year or so back we discussed some US Army
>publication that talked about NVIS and German
>vehicular "loop antennas". I described this as
>fiction, BS by an overenthusiastic imagination.

You described the German use of Frame Antennas as fiction?

>I the other day looked at a photo of a German
>SdKfz 251/6 Command Vehicle, half tracked.

You'll find these on their long range rear link 
command half tracks. SdKfz 250 and 251 
derivatives. And you'll find them on the SdKfz 
222 and 232 derivative armoured cars for rear 
link purposes.

Case in point, this 232 8 Rad (Fu)
http://www.panzer-reich.co.uk/images/armoured-cars/fu-sdkfz232-8-rad/SdKfz232-1.jpg

My understanding is that these antennas were for 
rear link communications between the armoured car 
or panzer group operating at long range from 
their larger parent formation.

There's an excellent article over on Army Radio 
Sales in the UK on this subject by Hue Miller 
ka7lxy E-Mail kargokult at proaxis.com.

More on the 30WS and 80WS, by Hue Miller KA7LXY
It's very interesting that the German scout and 
command vehicle set-ups included low medium wave 
equipment in the MWEc receiver and the 30WSa and 
80WS. this equipment was carried in addition to 
the more generally distributed low-vhf equipment 
of the UKW series, ( UKW = Ultra Kurzwelle = 
ultrashort wave ) with its shorter range of less 
than 5 miles.

The apparent logic was to provide a stronger 
ground wave signal which would follow the lay of 
the land better, over hill country, for example. 
of course in motion this was fairly impractical 
to operate with a standard antenna, so when you 
see photos of German scout cars you will see what 
is called a "frame antenna" around the top deck, 
which looks rather like a handrail.

This antenna itself was not practical for the 
command Panzer ( AFVs ) so these, in addition to 
the usual UKW mast antenna of about 1.5 meters 
length also carried another robust and heavy mast 
antenna with some capacitive "whiskers" from the 
top, called "Sternantenna" = "star antenna. The 
30WS covers 1000 - 3000 kc/s so it is well suited 
to amateur radio operation, either A1 or A3, on 
the 160 meter band, simply by supplying the 
correct voltages.
-- 
--
Ryan Gill              rmgill at SPAMmindspring.com
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