[BC] Some historical questions - vertical radiator

[brew@theMode.com]

nakayle at gmail.com wrote....

>> I'm also still looking for info on the first station to use a verticle
>> tower radiator rather than a flat-top T-antenna, if anyone knows that.

and Barry replied:

> I doubt there will be a specific reference to "first" on that....
> although I could be wrong.

> The issue seems to have been based on the development of base
> insulators, and I've read the 1928 time period was when they could
> support a full tower.

I suspect that series fed vertical towers were known, but too expensive to
be used by a start-up industry which had yet to become a viable money
maker.

As proof I offer Tom McNally's (of NJ's Millenium Broadcasting WFPG, WPUR,
WIXM, WKOE, WKXW, etc.) webpage:

http://mcnally.cc/tuckmain.htm

Note that the Wireless station in Tuckerton, NJ, built in 1912, appears to
be series fed.  I think it was a Hi Power VLF station, built by the German
government. One picture is captioned, "Charles Buelow looks at one of the
glass insulators used at the tower base".

However, the picture is from circa 1964, taken after the tower was
dismantled, but it's my guess that the tower was series fed from the
begining.

I'd only heard about the Tuckerton Wireless Station; I thought it was a
Short Wave Rhombic.  One day I was driving around and figured I'd check
out 'Radio Road'.  I drove by a huge concrete block, as big as a small
house, right in the middle of the road, in what's now a residential
neighborhood.  I passed it twice before I realized it was a guy anchor!
The tower base concrete block *IS* as big as a house.

Another of the anchors is right next to a house where THREE hams live,
N2GUU, N2NFH and KA2PFL.  I don't know them, or if they know what that
huge cement block is next to their house, I only saw the antennas and ham
call license plates on a truck.  Guess I should have stopped and rang the
bell, maybe next time!

After I got back home I did research on the web and found my friend Tom's
webpage about the Tuckerton Wireless Station.

brew

Bruce Schiller at CBS-TV NY Master Control Maintenance and WA2ZST