[TowerTalk] wind load vs Rohn specs

[Ken Hirschberg]

Hi Pete - Yes,  drag is proportional to V squared, and pressure drag is a
big piece of overall, but look at a Piper Cub, which cruises at about 65
MPH, and the noticeably fatter Aeronca Champ that cruises faster with the
same power. Definitely more to the story than area!
Think about putting a 2" high piece of plywood, face to the wind, out the
car window. Now, think about  doing the same thing with a piece of  2"
diameter tubing of the same length, and, finally, with a 2" thick piece of
aircraft strut, chord into the wind.
73, Ken

Pete Smith wrote:

> At 09:11 AM 9/12/00 -0700, Ken wrote:
> >
> >Mike - You're not kidding!  Look at the pictures of aircraft antennas.
> >It works, and people have been doing it for years, mostly for VHF / UHF
> >antennas and for the masts for HF antennas.  The nice thing about a
> >plane, of course is that under normal circumstances, the wind direction
> >is known.  That would be do-able to some extent for big HF beams with a
> >wind sensor and automated rotator.
>
> You'd have to get quantitative to definitively answer this, but I have a
> hunch that for less than 100 mph windspeed the area rather than the drag
> coefficient is decisive in determining the amount of drag (isn't there a
> V^2 in the equation someplace?)
>
> 73, Pete Smith N4ZR
>
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>
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