Metropol

some of you boys and girls might have noticed i've not been around much lately, well, i've been moving house and it's taken us a bit of time to get everything sorted, as well as being quite stressful due to the utter incompetence of our buyers conveyancer. but, it's all done now.

we've moved from a persimmon town house to a lovely bungalow in a truly idyllic little norfolk village. instead of hearing cars and people's shit music playing on a saturday morning, i now hear lovely little singing birds - living in a town development has it's advantages (like close access to takeaways, could walk home from the pub on a night out with my buddies), sadly in those persimmon developments you tend to get quite a lot of arseholes, like our old neighbour who used to drive around in untaxed (and i assume uninsured) cars constantly.

anyway, the guy who used to live here (he sadly died about a year ago) was a bit of an inventor - there is some pretty clever wiring in the house that i'm slowly trying to understand, but what really confuddled me is this:



i found this in the loft, it was powered by a mains adapter - i'm just wondering - do any of you clever people know what it is? it looks like some sort of aerial, but as you can see it's fixed to a wall in the loft, it seems a bit of a strange place to have it. although it's missing out of the picture, the top of the pole just has a white plastic cap on it.

any ideas?

Looka a bit more transmit than recieve to me at first glance. That's the best I can do quickly, I'm afraid.

Is it a CB antenna?

Looks a bit like a low powered microwave transmitter. Or a HAM radio enthusiasts stuff?

Sput wrote:Is it a CB antenna?

I initially read that as "C5"... no wonder it was fuzzy if it came via rigs in people's lofts!

Sput wrote:Is it a CB antenna?

Not one I've ever seen; and I used most versions (legal and slightly otherwise) in the very early eighties.

Ten ten from the one Whisky Drinker, good buddies.

Is there any other leads or connections going in to it other than power? For a time in the 90s/early 00s there was a trend for anoraks to set up their own MW/FM transmitting equipment and relay Radio Caroline's satellite (and later internet) feed contrary to the Postmaster General's wishes. I can recall my Dad finding one of these in the car while at my grandparents' years ago; this would have been somewhere around the Wayland area (probably somewhere between Watton, Attleborough and Thetford).

Here's something slightly out of leftfield; given its location and its shape, it could be an APT weather satellite receiving turnstile antenna.

"A turnstile antenna is a set of two dipole antennas aligned at right angles to each other and fed 90 degrees out-of-phase. The name reflects that the antenna looks like a turnstile when mounted horizontally."

It looks similar to others on this page:

http://www.digitalham.co.uk/weather/equ ... e-antenna/

The length of the dipole looks shorter than the 137mhz images - I think 137mhz requires a dipole length of around 3 foot. It's hard to tell from the photo, but it doesn't look to be over 2 foot total length which would put it up in the region of 225mhz, which is not available for amateur use in the uk as far as I can tell.

Initially I'd have said almost exactly what Nick did but the fact that it is mains powered suggests a masthead amp is involved and that'll only be for a receiver - if it was to transmit the power supply would be connected to the external box it was connected to.

But frankly, that's as close as my guesswork comes. I will, however, send it on to someone who might know more.

If it is for around 225Mhz, then perhaps he was an early DAB DXer?

Did DAB come late to that part of the world, doctor?