Sectional Aerial Towers

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 35, 14 March 1930, Page 11

Sectional Aerial Towers

A New Development 4 Lf NSTEAD of being one unit of steel. supported on large insulators, the 200-foot aerial towers of radio station WHE, at Cleveland, have been broken up into five sections, each about forty feet long, with big porcelain insulators between the sections. This method, which gives more uniform and reliable reception, was developed by a well known American radio engineer. The ideal aerial is one that is suspended in the air in order to radiate energy in a circle, and the sectional. tower is the nearest practical approach to this ideal. In one-piece towers it is’ often necessary to tune the tower to the frequency of the station because such masses of metal behave like one plate of a large condenser, the other terminal being the ground, and so have a natural period of oscillation. ‘With the sectional towers, the frequency of the individual sections is so high that they do not interfere with station frequency. Ladders and’ hoisting system for raising or lowering the aerial also are provided with gaps and insulated sections. Blectrie lights cannot be used because the wires interfere with insulation, and, instead, the top of the tower is lighted with acetylene, the gas being carried in copper tubing with porcelain’ insulation at each tower section.