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Re: Topband: tree losses

To: "Raoul Coetzee" <raoulcoetzee@yahoo.com>, "Topband" <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: tree losses
From: "Tom W8JI" <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Reply-to: Tom W8JI <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 14:23:49 -0400
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
<<<I found this and at least it makes a good old read.

http://www.rexresearch.com/squier/squier.htm


This is how things get started! once something is in print, no matter how wrong or unsubstantiated, it lives forever. Look at this statement:

<<
It will puzzle the amateur as it has puzzled the experts, how a tree, which is certainly well grounded, can also be an insulated aerial. The method of getting the disturbances in potential from treetop to instrument is so simple as to be almost laughable. One climbs a tree to two-thirds of its height, drives a nail a couple of inches into the tree, hangs a wire therefrom, and attaches the wire to the receiving apparatus as if it were a regular lead-in from a lofty copper or aluminum aerial. Apparently some of the etheric disturbances passing from treetop to ground through the tree are diverted through the wire --- and the thermionic tube most efficiently does the rest. >>

In about 100 years, we should reasonably believe there would be logically conducted experiments with documentation showing trees make reasonable antennas. We should also expect that trees would, by now, be universally hailed as useful antennas.

The article even claims it makes no difference if the tree antenna is in a thick woods, something we know cannot be true, and that simply disconnecting the wire from the tree causes the set to "go dead", something else we know is untrue. It also claims a 40 ft wire cannot work on multiple frequencies, which I suppose people who like magic 43 foot verticals would disagree with.

Instead we have only reports and measurements that trees cause increased loss, and all those multiband single length antennas. :)

73 Tom
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