Topband: Height of antenna and takoff angle - Titan II site 571-5

[Anthony Scandurra]

For those who may interested in visiting the Titan Missile Museum and/or
learning more about the museum and ham radio operations there, here are a
few links that may interest you:

http://www.titanmissilemuseum.org/

http://gvarc.us/GVARCFrames/Titan/Discone/Discone.htm

http://www.wa0itp.com/titandiscone.html

http://www.qsl.net/wb5dyg/html/Titan.htm

73, Tony K4QE


On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 12:41 AM, Frederick Wagner
<fhwagner4 at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

> The article and discussion about W3CRA's wonderful results reminded me of
> my tour of duty as a
>
> Missile Combat Crew Commander at Davis-Monthan AFB near Tucson. My primary
> site, now destroyed,
> was about 500 feet above the valley floor for headings about 300 through
> 345 - and the antenna was a
>
> military Collins Discone over a military grade radial field, and the
> discone could be fed at the base as a folded cage monopole -
>
> that monopole was about 60 feet tall and the cage was at least 45 feet in
> diameter.
> My 'free' time to operate was mainly at night, and I'd take my Century-21
> transceiver to the site, and run some RG-58 from
>
> my commander's console down to where I could tie into the antenna
> switching relay (our site rarely had to use HF for
> communications). On 80 CW, at night, on that antenna, in the late 1970's,
> working up into WA, BC, AK, JA and on to the rest of Asia
> was like calling down a quiet hallway. The only Titan II site left in
> Tucson is 571-6 down in the valley next to I-19,
>
> preserved as the Titan Missile Museum, and visiting hams can tie into the
> discone  - but it sits next to a mountain of mine tailings,
> with none of the takeoff  angle advantages that the site across the valley
> and up the hill had.
> If anyone wants to see the location, follow the two lane road East out of
> Green Valley AZ up to the mouth of Madera Canyon.
> Near the mountain, you'll see some faded Orange Fiberglass globes on the
> HV powerlines. We periodically had military Helicopters
> visiting the site, and those balls were so the helos would know where the
> site, and the powerlines were.
> My callsign in those days was W7HSS - I occasionally operated from other
> sites west of the copper mines, but the best results
> were always from my home site, 571-5
>
> Fred Wagner
> KQ6Q (ex W7HSS, W5QDL, K(N)6VVD
> _________________
> Topband Reflector
>