Sounds like his antenna may have been a Rhombic. They were very popular
for those who had the room back then.
Crop dusting aircraft would likely cut a wire antenna or phone line like
it wasn't there, but a friend (I went to high school with) misjudged the
height of a power line and neatly removed the vertical stabilizer from
his Ag Cat. With no lateral stabilization the torque rolled it over and
turned it into a lawn dart. It hit the ground going almost straight
down. killing him instantly.
Those transmission lines are substantial and wound on a steel core.
That strong steel core is much larger than any typical antenna wire.
The antenna might bring down a light plane but modern crop dusters are
built like the aeronautical version of a tank.
We flew down to Visit my wife's folks in Florida over the Christmas
holidays some years back. A layer of ground fog forming at night is
quite common in the Florida peninsula and may not burn off until 9 or 10 AM.
A piper Cherokee pilot took off one morning, staying really low. He
apparently forgot about the high tension lines abt 2 miles W of (IIRC)
Tampa Bay Exec. He apparently panicked when he saw the first set pass
overhead and pulled up...right into the second power line. The only
thing left was the engine and prop rolled into a ball. There was a notch
in the one prop blade a good inch deep where it hit one of the lines.
AFAIK power was not interrupted.
They probably replaced that span.
73
Roger (K8RI)
On 7/17/2016 Sunday 10:59 PM, lstoskopf@cox.net wrote:
Waaay back in the early 50s when I was just getting started there was a Ham in
central Kansas whose job was keeping oil wells pumping. He and his wife lived
in a very small house right in the middle of a batch of those 90 ft derricks
that we all think of when we think of Texas oil. Anyway, he had a long length
of wire running from his 'mud room' to one of the towers, then to another, etc
for maybe 5 or 6 towers and back to the shack. The towers were probably 800 ft
spaced. Fed with a open balanced tuner. I'm not sure what bands he was on,
but he could work DX!!!!!! RF's got to go somewhere!
So wondering how a long wire antenna fits into the regulation? His would have
be a very invisible airplane catcher.
N0UU
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