RadioBanter - View Single Post - When did ignorance overcome education, for the correct plural is, "antennae"?

David Ryeburn[_2_] · May 23rd 16, 11:05 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

In article ,
wrote:

I have never heard an American use the word "aerial" in reference to
an antenna.

I have. About the time of the end of World War II I was given a
home-made crystal set by my great-aunt, which she had used back in the
early days of AM broadcast radio in Cincinnati but which she hadn't used
for quite a few years. She referred to the wire thrown down on the floor
as an aerial. She lived about 2 miles from WKRC, 550 kHz and 5 kW, and
maybe 20 miles from super-high-power WLW, 700 kHz which came in even
stronger than WKRC. So a short wire thrown down on the rug was good
enough.

About four or five years later when I got my first ham license my
grandmother also referred to the wire connected to my ARC-5 transmitter
as an aerial. But her daughter, my aunt, called it an antenna. Everyone
else, especially the other radio amateurs I met around Cincinnati,
called the things antennas.

So yes, maybe "aerial" was used by some Americans, several generations
ago.

My great-aunt's Crosley table model radio had a short wave band on it,
and my aunt's large RCA console radio had two short wave bands. The
Crosley had a short piece of wire connected to a terminal on its back,
and the RCA had a length of wire thrown on the floor underneath it.
That's how I first bumped into amateur radio, 75 m and 20 m AM phone
operators. Our grade school library had a book about radio, and I
learned enough by reading it to know that if I wanted to be able to hear
more than clicks and buzzes near the lower ends of those two bands I had
to supply another signal for the CW signals to beat against. So I used
another table model radio placed on top of the RCA, tuned so a harmonic
of its local oscillator would beat against the incoming signal. That's
the only way I was able to listen to code transmissions for a year or
two until I had saved up enough money to get a used Hallicrafters S20R
receiver. That one got an antenna wire running out my bedroom window to
a nearby tree. Six months later my code speed was good enough to get my
first license.

I've kind of liked end-fed wires as antennas ever since, though now I'm
well aware of their limitations, and, with a pacemaker inside me, I no
longer dare use one. Balanced lines and center-fed doublets are a
nuisance when you go backpacking, but I do want to be able to hike back
out to the car afterwards.

David, VE7EZM and AF7BZ

--
David Ryeburn

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