Short Waves circa 1930

Recently I bought a rare book at an antique radio meet titled “Short Waves” by Charles R. Leutz and Robert B. Gable. It covers most facets of short waves as of the end of 1930. The book details propagation, antennas, receivers, transmitters, (greatly reduced) schematics and photos. Leutz and Gable were the President and Vice President of C. R. Leutz, Inc. Leutz is known for the superhet kits he produced in the middle 1920’s under the name of “Experimenters Information Service” (EIS) out of Philadelphia. The book was published by C.R. Leutz, Inc. in Altoona, Pennsylvania. There is no copyright or publishing date, nor a date stated in the preface! However, the manuscript appears to be finished at the end of 1930 or early 1931.

Two resources heavily drawn upon for examples in the book are radio sites of American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). There are many diagrams and photos of their transmitter and receiver sites in New Jersey.

AT&T had a transmitter site in Lawrenceville, New Jersey (between Trenton and Princeton) and a companion receiver site in Netcong, New Jersey (11 miles northwest of Morristown, near I-80 today). These sites were for point-to-point links with London and Buenos Aires.

I know that the famed Sterba curtain array was first developed for the Lawrenceville transmitter site, although it was not mentioned by that name in the book, the antenna diagram presented does match. The gain of the arrays used are stated as 17 dB.

For receiving, a different type of broadside array was used, the “zig-zag” antenna. I don’t recall seeing this array before. The gain of these arrays used are stated as 15 dB. This antenna has a broader beam in the vertical plane than the Sterba curtain.

The zig-zag is about 5 ½ wavelengths long. Basically, a wire runs ¼ wavelength horizontally about 1/8 wavelength above the ground, then goes vertical for ¼ wavelength, then horizontal for ¼ wavelength, then back down vertically for ¼ wavelength and this “squarewave” pattern repeats for about 21 times. The two ends of the antenna wire are the high horizontal sections but only 1/8 wave long. A second identical wire is spaced ¼ wave behind the first wire. The antenna is fed at the middle of the array at the mid-point of the horizontal bottom sections. The wires are supported by wooden scaffolding. The first photo below is of the Netcong, New Jersey receiving array on 24.7 meters.

The transmitter and receiver sites each had 13 antenna arrays – three pointed at Buenos Aires and 10 pointed at London on frequencies from 14 meters to 44.4 meters.

ITT had coastal sites in New Jersey with a transmitter site at Ocean Gate and the companion receiver site in Forked River. These sites were for communicating with ships at sea. Control from NYC.

The land-based transmitters were 15 kW. The shipboard transmitters were usually 500 Watts.

The second photo attached below is of the Forked River receiving set. The receivers are single-conversion super-hets. Let’s pretend that the operators at the controls are Dave W2VW and Rich W2OBR of Tom’s River, NJ. Hi.

Photo 1. below – AT&T Netcong, New Jersey receiving array on 24.7 meters.
Photo 2. below – ITT Forked River, New Jersey receiving set.