Rethinking The Antennas

[Bill Mangus]

John Romig asked above about damage inside the aircraft when the belly antenna was lost when taking off at Lae.  I expect the antenna broke free at the point where the lead wire connects to the antenna (that  would seem to be a weak point), but I have to wonder if enough force would have transferred inside to stretch or break the lead wire where it attached to the receiver.  I wonder if that would have been something Fred could have noticed.

[Ric Gillespie]

I expect the antenna broke free at the point where the lead wire connects to the antenna (that  would seem to be a weak point)

It's hard to say.  The antenna was attached to the starboard-side pitot tube, a mast roughly amidship, and a mast aft.  We've speculated that the aft mast was knocked off as the airplane swung around to begin its takeoff run, with the antenna wire now dragging the broken mast along the ground.  The puff of dust we see in the takeoff film might be the broken mast snagging on something and ripping the wire free. I would think the external feed line would fail where it attaches to the fairlead insulator. 

[Simon Ellwood]

In reply #49, Ric says:

>>If she later tuned the receiver to 3105 to listen for Itasca without switching to Band 3 (1500 to 4000 kHz) she wouldn't hear anything, but when she tuned to 7500 to use the loop, with the receiver still set on Band 4.

Do we know if this is actually possible to do - does the dial and (apparent) selectable range for Band 4 on the remote control unit go that far below 4000kHz down to 3105kHz ?

[Ric Gillespie]

does the dial and (apparent) selectable range for Band 4 on the remote control unit go that far below 4000kHz down to 3105kHz ?

The central dial shows the complete range of frequencies from 200 up to 10,000 kHz. By cranking the Tuning Control you can set the needle on any frequency regardless of what band you have selected on the Band Selector.  Unfortunately, we don't have a detailed image of the central dial.