Early 1920's AM radio stations in Bangor Maine had horizontal roof top
antennas. WLBZ, when it first moved from Dover Foxcroft to Bangor had only
one program, a church service on Sunday morning. I have found no evidence
of mountain top AM radio stations in the state. Much later they went to
towers erected in moist fresh water areas. Even later some discovered near
salt water sites were better.
1920's Low frequencies in Maine
I have done many years of research on the Radio Corporation of America
radio relay station 1XAO in Belfast Maine on air from 1923 to until the
depression of 1929. They had four 150 foot towers. three in the form of a
triangle with the 4th in the center. It was a horizontal affair with feed
wires coming down near to each tower to tuning coils for different
transmitting frequencies. The main frequency was 182 Kilocycles (1650
meters)
Receiving was by a wave antenna ( named Beverage later) that was two #10
copper wires running parallel on cross arms spaced 64 inches with an average
height of 18 feet. The wires were transposed at frequent intervals, and the
length was 52,610 feet (just under 10 miles) As time went on from 1923 to
1926 they installed two more wave antennas. The finished array had three,
the same length, and spaced 6 miles apart. Harold Beverage made trips to
check installation progress. (Harold's boy hood home, and some family
members lived on North Haven Island a short distance away.)
Samuel Winthrop Dean, the Engineer in Charge of 1XAO, left RCA and went to
Houlton Maine, December of 1925 to build the first Trans-Atlantic AT&T radio
telephone. Dean graduated from Harvard and was a licensed amateur radio
operator, call 1ZD issued by the Department of Commerce, radio service
bulletin Feb 1915 No.2 special land station, wavelengths 200, 425, 600.
>From his Harvard records he was a charter member of the ARRL. At Houlton
Maine he installed a large complex (Beverage) wave antenna array. Patents
are available through Google searches.
73
Bruce-K1FZ
----- Original Message -----
From: "W2XJ" <w2xj@nyc.rr.com>
To: <topband@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2012 8:20 PM
Subject: Re: Topband: Monopole Radiation Patterns, takeoff angles etc
> Having worked in the business over 54 years with LW MW and SW
> transmission systems up to 2 megawatts and having built numerous MW
> arrays to 12 towers I would respectfully suggest a quick check of
> fundamental broadcast history. Google is your friend.
>
> BTW most early stations broadcast from rooftops, not mountain tops,
> and some diamond towers (Blau Knox) are still in service at legendary
> stations.
>
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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