An application just means that the _applicant_ believes it is patentable.
If the examiner finds sufficient prior art, out it goes. On the other hand,
there is something to be said for applying several older ideas to a new
problem and making the _combination_ patentable.

--
Steve N, K,9;d, c. i My email has no u's.

"Art Unwin KB9MZ" wrote in message
m...
"Rick Karlquist N6RK" wrote in message
news:M5bxc.14440$HG.13166@attbi_s53...
snip

IMHO, I don't see how they can patent the basic concept of
the SteppIR, but then I'm not a patent attorney. There
is the "Cliff Dweller" adjustable dipole as prior art, but will
the examiner ever find that. Maybe they are just patenting the idea of
the tape in the hollow tube.

Rick N6RK

Well I remember doing the same thing using a Mercedes car antenna
which had a nice drive on it where the plastic cord was changed to
wire. Worked O.K. when running the wire thru telescopic fishing poles.
The first printing of this sort of design was one described in
in many electrical journals in early 1970 . The antenna was sold by
Racal
( type AE3062) which was an all frequency monopole.
They used a glass fibre column and at the base were two driven spools
one of which had a flat silver coated copper tape and the other had a
flat insulator tape. These tapes were both joined to form one complete
tape which was driven up the mast (fibre glass tube column). In one
version they had a frequency discriminating bridge sensor for an
automatically tuned servo-system.They had two forms of antennas for
commercial and military aplications, 2-30 Mhz and 4- 30 mHZ with poles
65 foot high and 125 foot high. Unfortunately it does require a ground
plane to cover all frequencies a problem I over came with my
particular antenna by using a full dipole structure.
Like you I cannot see how a moveable conducting tape inside a fibre
glass tube
can be seen as a new invention or antenna device when the above
description
was so widely printed in the U.S. and sold commercially to boot!
Regards
Art





"Art Unwin KB9MZ" wrote in message
m...
I notice that the STEPPIR antenna patent is still "Pending"