Log Periodic+ E of Corrine

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wbloss

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Does anyone know what/who this monster Log Periodic antenna belongs to? It's about 11 miles W of I-15 on 83, not too far from the ATK,

P6220421small.jpg[/ATTACH]

There's also an "umbrella" or some such just east of it

Both been there for years and the dog house has no power to it

Wally
 

n5ims

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Possibly the old KUSW and later KTBN Shortwave broadcasting site. I believe it was built around 1987 as KUSW-SW and soon told to the TBN network and switched calls to KTBN-SW. I think it shut down for good in the mid 2000s or so. I thought that they had torn down the site, but it may have simply been abandoned.
 

wbloss

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Possibly the old KUSW and later KTBN Shortwave broadcasting site. I believe it was built around 1987 as KUSW-SW and soon told to the TBN network and switched calls to KTBN-SW. I think it shut down for good in the mid 2000s or so. I thought that they had torn down the site, but it may have simply been abandoned.

Wow - does look abandoned, ground level photo is from today, sure would be fun to load that antenna up!

W
 

theaton

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My old friend WI7P/N7SFI runs an EME shack somewhere up there, so I sent him a note to see if he knows anything about it. He can be hard to get a response from, though.
 

kruser

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Wow - does look abandoned, ground level photo is from today, sure would be fun to load that antenna up!

W
I was thinking the same about loading that thing up!

Back in the 70's, 80's and maybe 90s, there as a Southwestern Bell Telephone central office here that had a huge log periodic on it's roof. The antenna was larger than the building and this CO was one of the larger ones. The center ROHN looking boom sagged in the middle as it was so long. The center upright mast extended well above the boom and they ran support cables from atop the high center mast out to the ends of the boom at each end to give it some needed support. The entire thing was on a rotor and its motor and gearbox housing appeared to be the size of a small car or van! Today, I think all that is left is the housing that housed the rotor motor. Sometime after Southwestern Bell switched to SBC and then at&t, the antenna was removed.
Apparently there was a nationwide net setup and several participants had antennas atop many phone company CO buildings around the country. I was told that it was a part of the civil defense network.
They held HF test or drill nets every week or month, I forget which now, on several different HF frequencies from the bottom to the top of the HF range. They were easy to ID as many simply used their city names.
The many frequencies used were posted in several of the so called "Secret HF" or "Government" frequency guides that our dear Tom Kneitel and others used to publish.
That same building had at least one or two long wires on its roof also and those may still be there. It's been a while since I drove past that CO though.

I always remember listening to that net and even took a drive to the CO once just before the net came up just to see if they ever rotated that huge log periodic. They did and I got to see it rotate nearly a full 360! Talk about slow and very "bouncy" when it would stop! It looked like the thing was going to self destruct. From the ground, it did not appear that the antenna was more than 10 feet from the rooftop but when you went to a different vantage point where you could see the top of the rotor housing really well, you could see it was indeed higher than 10 feet from the roof but still not by a lot. I'd almost say they could work on the thing with a tall A frame ladder. In all the times I drove by that building, I never once saw anyone on the roof working on it and they always parked it facing towards the direction I lived.

I've seen pictures of the same antenna mounted atop other CO's across the country on the net but I don't think I've ever seen any of the one I used to watch. I did take 35mm film pictures of the thing but who knows what I would have done with those.
Thanks for your pictures as it brought back many memories for me of the one here! Very similar looking construction but yours is missing the extended center mast and support wires out to the ends of the boom. Perhaps the antenna in your photo is not as long and did not need the extra support for the boom or it was built out of stronger materials which negated the need for the boom supports. It's hard to tell from the picture as to how big that thing really is!
 

kf7yn

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Definitely not the old KUSW/KTBN site, that was in SL County on 5400 So around 6000 West across from Hercules Aerospace. I was involved with it when it fired up. They used a log periodic curtain antenna strung between poles, not a yagi beam.
 

theaton

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From my friend:

Years ago I heard from a ham in Layton (Pete, K7ZTM, now a silent key) that there was a very large log periodic antenna that was available for the taking but no one he knew wanted to pay for the crane to take it down. Perhaps this is it?

From what they understand they are designed to be placed at a center height above ground.

If I had lots of extra money I would get the horn off the top of my tower and replace it with that log periodic antenna.
 
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