There was this steerable phased array of half-wave dipoles needing to be tested, not for its RF properties because there was high degree of confidence in that, but just to make sure that all of the dipoles were physically intact.
There were literally hundreds of these things distributed over a huge parcel of land, somewhere in Texas as I was told. The most vexing issue was how to determine quickly and accurately if each dipole was still properly attached to its individual feed line. The mounting positions were much too high to be seen from the ground, so how could the feed line attachments be accurately, simply, and with there being so many of them, quickly tested?
The answer was to place a 100K resistor into the antenna assemblies as shown below:
Each dipole itself was an open circuit for DC, but with the 100K installed, a simple ohmmeter could be used to check the feed line integrity.
With that and maybe a pair of binoculars to make sure a bird hadn't broken a dipole element, each dipole could be quickly and reliably tested just by measuring the 100K.
The thorniest issue is how quickly and accurately determine whether each dipole is always attached to his individual power line. Mounting positions were too high to be seen from the Earth.
Posted by: לפרטים נוספים | November 28, 2011 at 12:13 PM