Mysterious Batwing

[stromberg6]

I was driving through Willamansett MA, near Springfield today and came upon a strange sight: a single batwing antenna on top of an AM broadcast tower. I tried to find some historic info, but didn't. The present-day station is WACE, which runs 5KW days, 8 (!) watts night non-directional. Anyone have any ideas about this?

[Sandy G]

Looks ALMOST like an older UHF TV antenna...

[Einar72]

Looks like a 1940's Super Turnstile VHF array used for TV transmission.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Einar72

Looks like a 1940's Super Turnstile VHF array used for TV transmission.

Indeed it is! I have never seen a single bay version before, but it unmistakable. These antennas are actually fairly broadband, and omni-directional... they could be using it to receive "remote" transmissions from an event van, or even as a STL (studio transmitter link) on VHF frequencies. Cool discovery!

jr

[Dave A]

Solved with help from Scott Fybush, curator of all station and tower info and very kind to help us out. You can find him at;

http://www.fybush.com/

From Scott;

Hi Dave,

I can't get to the attachment (since I'm not a videokarma member), but
I'm pretty sure what your friends are looking at is the WACE-FM antenna,
circa 1948. WACE-FM operated briefly on 100.9 and then went dark by
about 1950.

s

Sharp eyes Stromberg. Nothing like finding a 62 year old antenna on top of a stick.

[stromberg6]

Thanks Dave for the info. I was pretty sure that it wasn't used for TV, but was a TV-type antenna, as had been used all over the world for low-band broadcasting. It's in a poor location for VHF transmission, too, and that, along with the no $$$ brought in by many early post war FM'ers, led to the demise of WACE-FM.
Kevin

[jr_tech]

And apparently Jampro still sells the Super Turnstile / Batwing style antenna for Low and High band transmission.
http://www.jampro.com/tv.html
not affiliated,
jr