On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:34:03 -0500, (Richard
Harrison) wrote:

Jeff wrote:
"Somewhat later, the "homer" was introduced."

The last topic in Terman`s 1955 opus is "Radio Direction Finding". On
page 1048 Terman writes: "This behavior (simulated sense antenna) causes
a signal to be delivered to the receiver even though the loop ts in the
position for zero response;"

A homer is quite different. Dumb story follows.

Once upon a time, the government decided that small business needed to
have some of the smaller military contracts directed in their
direction. No altruism was involved as the military was just trying
to cut costs.

Intech Inc was in the marine radio business and decided to bid on a
USCG contract to design and build a homer. The chief engineer handled
the negotiations and I only found out after we had underbid everyone
else by about 50%. Oops. There was just one problem. Nobody knew
what a homer was or how it worked.

After some very strange ideas and misconception, I removed a dusty
copy of Radio Engineering Handbook, 3rd edition, by Henney. This is
the 1941 edition, but much of the data is from the first edition in
1933 thanks to war time censorship. Pg 613 has a schematic of a homer
antenna and receiver system. I drag this to management who initially
declares that the USCG couldn't possibly want something that simple.
It took a while, but I eventually based the design on the ancient
design from the book. It eventually became the AN-SRD/21 homer.

I have a friend, N5CPA, who was a B-24 bomber pilot flying out of Italy
to bomb Austria and Germany as WW-2 was ending. They had a direction
finding station in North Africa to advise them of their positions when
needed. Problem was, Germans often answered first with wrong location
and direction in impeccable American English so Americans might exhaust
their fuel.

Fair enough. We were borrowing the German Consol navigation signals
over the Bay of Biscane:
http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/consol.html

Good reading: The Wizard War by R.V. Jones. Covers the battle of the
navigation beams during WWII, V1, V2, and allied scientific
intelligence.

Walter Maxwell worked for the FCC at war`s end in Hawaii and equipped
himself with an Adcock antenna so he could advise lost American aviators
of their positions in the Pacific. I think Walter has published his
story in a radio magazine.

Yep. Walter Maxwell (W2DU) emailed me a copy of his article from the
Jan 2002 issue of QST. Very interesting and well worth reading. I
don't consider it good form to resend what looks like copyrighted
material, so you'll have to either get your copy from the author or
from the ARRL archives:
http://www.w2du.com

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

Marginally related drivel: Most of my experience is with doppler and
rotating antenna type direction finders. Some of my ancient 1994
comments on the technology:
http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/doppler_notes1.txt
http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/doppler_notes2.txt

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558