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Cage aerial

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Historic Radio Engineers Club station, Riverhead, New York, in 1922; a cage T-antenna 60 ft high by 90 ft long. The conductor is made of a "cage" of 6 wires held apart by wooden spreaders; this increased capacitance and decreased ohmic resistance. This antenna achieved transatlantic contacts on 1.5 MHz, at a power of 440 W.

A cage antenna (British cage aerial) is a radio antenna where a conventional design has been augmented by replacing a single long conductor with several parallel wires, connected at their ends, and held in position by ring spacers or support struts mounted on a central mast (if any). The "cage" is either mounted around a central mast (either conducting or non-conducting) or suspended from overhead wires.

Purpose

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Examples of this are the quadrant antenna, a steeply omnidirectional shortwave transmitting antenna in the form of an L-dipole consisting of two identical cage traps, and the curtain antenna (a directional shortwave transmitting antenna) with several folding dipoles made of cage traps.[1]

Shortwave quadrant antenna consisting of two horizontal cage traps.[2]

History

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In 1921, an amateur radio operator tried to win a $500.00 prize with his cage aerial.[3]

References

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  1. ^ "Kurzwellensender Moosbrunn bei Wien". www.wabweb.net. Retrieved 2024-11-09.
  2. ^ "Rundfunksender in Bayern". www.wabweb.net. Retrieved 2024-11-09.
  3. ^ Gernsback, Hugo (2016), Wythoff, Grant (ed.), "Results of the $500.00 Prize Contest: Who Will Save the Radio Amateur? (1923)", The Perversity of Things, Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 256–268, doi:10.5749/j.ctt1jktpxr.48, ISBN 978-1-5179-0085-4, JSTOR 10.5749/j.ctt1jktpxr.48, retrieved 2024-11-09

See also

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