Bcasts on 500Khz area continue in china from xsg on 522.5KHz..

Laurence
KL1X/5 Marriot NW 10th Floor
San Antonio

From: "Andy Talbot" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC: "Linda Holtby" <[email protected]>
Subject: LF: MF Still on shifp?
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 18:32:41 +0100

Yesterday I was watching two large cruise ships sail down Southampton water
(P&O ships,  'Artemis' and 'Aurora').   Both had a large wire antennas
strung between the masts, and in the case of  Artemis this extended down at
each end close to bow and stern; and there may even have been two wire
side-by-side on this ship.  A really long antenna.   I'm not sure of the
length of these ships, but they could  be 200 metres (ish), so even at the
bottom end of HF these are electrically long-wires.
Of course, the pair on Artemis, if I saw them correctly, could even be
phased for really high gain at HF - a Rhombic perhaps?

Does anyone know if large modern ships still have MF, or a serious HF
presence?  Or are the wire antenna(s ?) just there to hang flags from?  Or
are they not even antennas, but just used for supporting decorations.

Artemis also had a mass of big whips on the bow, which I assume were base
tuned HF - the normal VHF whips were practically invisible beside them.
Aurora presumably had something similar, but they weren't obvious.

Needless to say, each ship had two large VSAT radomes, and three or four
smaller Inmarsat (and other satcom?) antennas.

Andy  G4JNT

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