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So You Think You Have a Big Antenna
24 February 2020 | by Many hams put up some pretty impressive antenna farms with large towers and big arrays. I have a small tower up at the cabin but it is quite puny (about 30 feet) compared to these more serious stations. I like to check out big antenna installations, especially the big commercial towers, as we travel around the country.
There are quite a few radio towers in the range of 2000 feet (~600 meters), as listed on this Wikipedia page. At 2063 feet, the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota is the tallest radio mast in the world. The WEAU tower in Wisconsin, listed as 2000 feet, collapsed in 2011 due to a winter ice storm. Pete/WD4IXD recently pointed me to this video that describes how the tower was rebuilt within one year of the failure. Amazing story!
So you may think your antenna is big but it’s probably not 2000 feet tall.
73 Bob K0NR
The post So You Think You Have a Big Antenna appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.
5 Responses to “So You Think You Have a Big Antenna”
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- Matt W1MST, Managing Editor
WOW, Just totally unreal.
I don’t even want to think of what tower cost.
i’ll stick with my end fed wire lol
BOB AF2DX
Mind blowing! I had no idea the video was going to be so informative and interesting (although I guess I should have known after seeing the work that went into putting up my small tower).
Thanks for posting this, Bob.
73
Colin GM4JPZ
I will stick with my 30 foot tower just high enough to get the 2 meter and 440 antennas up a little and my inverted V multi band hf antenna to hang to. Nothing extravagant, but hey that is what ham radio is about. Even in today’s high tech world when that fails the bare basics of ham radio always will.
I will stick with my 30 foot tower just high enough to get the 2 meter and 440 antennas up a little and my inverted V multi band hf antenna to hang to. Nothing extravagant, but hey that is what ham radio is about. Even in today’s high tech world when that fails the bare basics of ham radio always will work.
Very interesting–in the 1950s & 60s when we had the best Sunspot peak ever & the other guy had a better signal–we used to say–he has better antennas, equipment,etc—it was much later on in years that we realised—you can touch the heavens with your yagi & if there are no Sunspots–your results are gonna be a big nix lemon !
Norris K5YDU is very right—under ideal condx even a basic setup works just fine without reaching for the skies !