On 1/28/2017 10:19 AM, Michael Black wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2017, Dave Platt wrote:

In article ,
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Anyway, 900 MHz yagi antennas are kinda pedestrian. Getting something
to work at VLF frequencies is a real challenge.

Not all that hard, really. All you have to do is lay out a redundent
pair of oil pipelines along the proper courses, and you can make a VLF
rhombic large enough to be seen from geostationary orbit :-)

I think it wsa in the surplus column in CQ in the sixties, someone wrote
about a long wave station up for sale, and added that they had to keep
replacing the buried ground wires, because treasure hunters would
stumble on it and take some. A little hard to contain that sort of
thing when it's so big.

Then there was VK3ATN who did moonbounce from Australia in the sixties,
with rhombics. He could make slight adjustments because he'd had some
rigging to adjust something, so he got a bit more time, but it was
limited to a few days a month. But with the 100W limit of Australia (it
was something like that) he did fine with the rhombics.

Of course, he lived in the outback, so he had endless space, just needed
telephone poles and wire. He had rhombics for a few bands.

A friend bought a house some 10 years ago and I looked it up on Google.
The pictures showed a humongous Yagi over the house which must have been
for 20 meters or maybe 40. The 4 element antenna was much larger than
the house! There were (and still are) three guy points which are huge I
beams in concrete around the house. In the basement there was what had
been his radio shack with sound proofing and EMI screen. I was
impressed, but everything other than the guy points is gone now.

--

Rick C