Almost everyone has heard the saying, “I wish I had a nickel every time I…” The saying holds true for me when it comes to recalling how many ops I have worked who were using a longwire antenna. While the longwire antenna may sound overly simplistic to be an effective radio antenna that is not the case at all. Here is an excellent article about the long wire antenna by Integrated Publishing:
A LONG-WIRE ANTENNA is an antenna that is a wavelength or longer at the operating frequency. In general, the gain achieved with long-wire antennas is not as great as the gain obtained from the multi-element arrays studied in the previous section. But the long-wire antenna has advantages of its own. The construction of long-wire antennas is simple, both electrically and mechanically, with no particularly critical dimensions or adjustments. The long-wire antenna will work well and give satisfactory gain and directivity over a frequency range up to twice the value for which it was cut. In addition, it will accept power and radiate it efficiently on any frequency for which its overall length is not less than approximately 1/2 wavelength. Another factor is that long-wire antennas have directional patterns that are sharp in both the horizontal and vertical planes. Also, they tend to concentrate the radiation at the low vertical angles. Another type of long-wire antenna is the BEVERAGE ANTENNA, also called a WAVE ANTENNA. It is a horizontal, long-wire antenna designed especially for the reception and transmission of low-frequency, vertically polarized ground waves. It consists of a single wire, two or more wavelengths long, supported 3 to 6 meters above the ground, and terminated in its characteristic impedance, as shown in figure 4-34
Preceding article copyright Integrated Publishing – link: http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14182/css/14182_207.htm
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