Original style WWII antennas

[BuzzBy]

In my quest to make our AT-11 more original I am removing the flying V and fiberglass whip antennas and replacing them with the original style flying wires.[/img]
The flying V, in addition to being "way too modern" was installed incorrectly in the 70's. (level in the 3 point attitude instead of faired in flight).
I am installing an early original style mast with V wires that will be the Nav and one Com antenna.



I wired the Nav V wires with a balun.

My local radio shop is going to test the SWR and reflectivity, but it should be a good antenna platform.
I want to put the Com 2 antenna on the belly.
My question is what would be the best period looking Com antenna for this?
I'm leaning toward an A-15 style.

[John Dupre]

I think it is great you are trying to make the aircraft look more authentic and still be functional. There is an antenna installation technique that was common back in the 40s. This involved the long wire antenna wrapped around a cable thimble. Nowadays they are seen on older ADF installations as the sense antenna. Typically the antenna wire is bent around the thimble and the free end is wrapped around antenna portion to secure it. This is perfectly adequate for slow speed aircraft.

The 1940s technique for "high speed" aircraft is to add a second wire at the thimble and make three wraps around antenna portion. The first wrap is one end of second wire wrapped around its' other leg, the antenna and the free end of the antenna. The second wrap uses the free end of antenna wire around the antenna and the remaining leg of the second wire and the third wrap is the remaining end of the second wire wrapped around antenna portion. There was a specific number of wraps (6 or so as I remember) and each wrap butts right up agains the previous one and obviously the diameter of each wrap steps down from the first to the last. I don't get to see a lot of warbirds these days but can't remember one that used that technique on a wire antenna.

I was taught to use the technique at the avionics shop that was my first job in aviation and years later I found a 40s era book with illustrations of how to do it.

[BuzzBy]

Thank you John,
Even though this AT-11 would not be a good candidate to put back totally original, I'm trying to improve it as I can.
I did use thimbles but i swaged fittings on the long wires, (like a control cable).

I would love to see any of those 1940's publication illustrations, if you run across them again.

Thanks again for the info,
John Hess