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Re: [TowerTalk] The history of using multiple towers for directional pur

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] The history of using multiple towers for directional purposes
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2023 21:17:27 -0700
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
This is a very interesting piece. The best job I ever had as a student was working in Pete Johnson's consulting office. It was in 1961. Pete, along with the late Carl Smith, had written the FCC technical Rules for AM broadcasting after WWII, which included the standards for protecting other stations from interference, how to document proposed antenna designs in a license application, and how to make the field measurements of a completed system to prove that they met their design goals.

Pete's practice consisted of the design of very sophisticated multi-tower arrays, in which array geometry, as well as the amplitude and phase of the current fed to each tower, was adjusted to produce the required protections. And this for a broadcast band that had been full for 20 years!

Our EE senior class got to tour both the WLW transmitter site and the adjacent Voice of America site in Mason, OH. Until it was torn down decades ago, the massive VOA antenna farm (two Sterba Curtains and something like 21 Rhombics) was visible from I-75, roughly midway between Dayton and Cincinnati. During our visit to WLW, they fired up the 500kW rig into a dummy load, which was cooled by a water bath out front of the building.

73, Jim K9YC

On 10/27/2023 5:49 PM, Radio KH6O wrote:
Not sure if I sent this earlier:

https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/roots-of-radio/the-development-of-the-directional-am-broadcast-antenna?utm_term=5E35C2B9-3044-4235-9961-04D879406E09&utm_medium=email&utm_content=5816E138-5287-4D1C-BBFA-9CA84B94BB6D&utm_source=SmartBrief



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