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Wonder how the old 'Horn Antenna' on nearby Telegraph Hill is doing? Years ago, got a retired Bell Labs physicist named Dieter Marcuse to give me a walk-around
by escherplex 8y ago
Wonder how the old 'Horn Antenna' on nearby Telegraph Hill is doing? Years ago, got a retired Bell Labs physicist named Dieter Marcuse to give me a walk-around tour of the thing. Now it's a National Monument but then it was viewed by engineers as a relic.
- walrus01 8y agoModern wireless ISP equipment vendors have revived the horn antenna, in much smaller versions, for point to point and point-to-multipoint 5.x GHz applications: https://rfelements.com/products/wireless-broadband/ultrahorn-directional-antennas/overview/ https://rfelements.com/products/wireless-broadband/ultrahorn... Much better sidelobe rejection and front/back ratio performance than traditional parabolics. What's old is new again. I know you're talking about the Holmdel Horn (steerable) used for earlier transatlantic satellite relay experiments. But there are still a great many sites across the USA with 6 GHz horns in place on towers, mostly doing nothing. I have seen tower crews with cutting torches cutting up KS-15676 horn antennas because they're too big and bulky to economically get off a tower any other way. https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=KS-15676+horn&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=KS-...
- escherplex 8y agoThanks for the links. It's sort of sad when, knowing how much precision work went into assembling and installing one of those old KS15667s, you then watch them being unceremoniously demolished with blow torches. Wonder if a some point it may be possible to synthesize a compact, ultra wide-band, minimal side loops ultrahorn for HF. Focused 24dBd signals on 20 meters without the need for a yagi antenna farm would be nice.