RadioFreeLiberal.com

A startling and apparently valid peer-reviewed paper has been creating a stir among designers of radio antennas. It appeared in the April First edition of Proceedings of the World Photon Psychology Institute, a respectable journal published in Cambridge, MA. It's title is Simulated Human Behavior in HF Gain Antennas, by the respected Kurt N. Sterba, Ph.D.. Here's the abstract:

This paper describes recent striking results from applying a new method to the design of antennas used by high-frequency (HF) radio stations for long-distance communication. In the past, equations from physics have been used for such design. They have resulted in very effective equipment, which nevertheless remains prohibitively large or expensive for most users of these relatively long wavelengths. Here, I describe a striking new approach using math derived from the social sciences to create much smaller antennas offering extremely high performance at a very low cost.

Excerpts:

... the Big Sale Effect was discovered in the early 1930s, when certain configurations of directing and reflecting elements created extremely concentrated and unidirectional radiation of both the electric and magnetic fields. The RF radiation patterns reminded the authors of the movements of their wives in large crowds of people attracted by bargain prices for clothing. While the exact mechanism here remains unknown, this effect proved to be predictable by statistical methods such as those used in psychology.

...

Work in this area was sporadic until Dr. R.F. Burns of MIT and myself became interested in another phenomenon in which alternating-current electrons are not only converted efficiently into RF radiation, but actually behave as if they are being sucked into the antenna. This configuration was demonstrated as allowing much higher loading of transmitter output circuits while actually reducing waste heat and power consumption. Mathematical data from measurements almost unsettlingly resembles statistical changes in unit sales at Apple stores when a new iPhone comes out. Therefore, we have given this phenomenon the name of Psychological Gain, and the resulting antennas are known as Pyschological Gain Arrays (PGAs).

Along with greatly increased efficiency, the other striking attribute of the PGA is its extremely small size. One benefit of this is that it can be easily isolated from other conductive materials, allowing accurate measurements on an "antenna range" whose length is measured in meters rather than the more traditional tens of kilometers. When compared with the standard hypothetical isotropic source used for RF gain ratings, even the smallest antennas realize gain figures in the many tens of decibels (dB). A mobile antenna that can fit on a vehicle can achieve 50 dBi gain at 10 MHz in an open area. Slightly larger base station PGAs that easily fit the towers in current use have been measured as 75 dBi gain at 10 MHz, and close to 70 dBi across the entire HF spectrum with the attendant extreme directivity. These results are very striking...

There'd be a link here if this wasn't the first of April.

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"Our democratic institutions... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California," remarked Canadian politician Charlie Angus. (BBC, 11/27/18)

Are you almost done with your April Fools Day shenanigans?


You wanna design a better antenna, I'd suggest spending several years meditating on the role of spherical harmonics in solving differential equations.


Well, that, and the many possible solutions to Maxwell's equations.

ZoWie, it sounds like they discovered that if you stand next to your TV and hold onto one of the rabbits ears, you get better reception.

Shine, the Beetles solved Maxwell's equations. And it wan't with spherical harmonics, it was with a silver hammer.

The best antenna designs are still the oldest ones. Compact transmitting antennas are a dime a dozen, but no one's figured out how to shrink a 130-foot wavelength.

Actually you can do things with terminated rhombics that get performance almost as if they had my fake specs. Let other people worry about band conditions. With one of those at either end, and the right kind of electronic gear connected, and operators who know what they're doing, you have your own RF pipe. Marconi/RCA owned the Pacific with this stuff, and usually cheaper to the end user than satcom. But it only works if you have a great deal of real estate available.

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"Our democratic institutions... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California," remarked Canadian politician Charlie Angus. (BBC, 11/27/18)

My antenna on my TV is quite an old design. No, I do not have cable, but this small antenna I got for about 20 dollars..11 years ago. kinda like rabbit ears?.. It is on the 2nd floor and connects thru wires to the TV in the basement..(I installed the cheap antenna and wired it myself)...guess what? It works and works fine. I get about 35 stations....but I don't watch much...maybe old eps of Star Trek, or I've Got a Secret. Well, once in a while I do watch Judge Judy, but the old antenna works fine.

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~ Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Here I've got an ancient Radio Shack rabbit ears with an actually pretty decent RF preamp in the base. It gets over-the-air digital TV just fine. I only use it on occasion to see all those little digital subchannels that the cable wire thing doesn't have.

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"Our democratic institutions... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California," remarked Canadian politician Charlie Angus. (BBC, 11/27/18)

I won't even hook that much up anymore.


Shortly after the lead up to the invasion of Iraq (way back in the early naughts), I said, "fuck this shit," and turned off broadcast television reception in my home.


Prior to that, immediately after 9/11, I turned off cable television.

Don't start me on Desert Storm, and what CNN did to brainwash the public.

I can cite papers published by the Army War College, yes there is such a thing, with names like "Winning CNN Wars." From Desert Storm on, cable nooz was considered a force multiplier.

And saying so, at the time, cost you your social life. Or did I know the wrong people?

CNN's been on my shit list ever since. I used to grudgingly turn it on for huge breaking stories, especially the ones with fires and tear gas and cops and protesters and such, but since the 2016 cultural meltdown I haven't seen a frame of it. FOX was already on the block list. MSNBC was OK, then not, than sort of (in prime time), but we'll see how long that lasts.

Entertainment TV? Don't have the time for it. It's ball games (in the background while I do something more productive) and F1 races, for which everything comes to a halt. But they're short.

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"Our democratic institutions... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California," remarked Canadian politician Charlie Angus. (BBC, 11/27/18)

I didn't have CNN back then. That didn't stop the New York Times from being pretty much the same. I still haven't forgiven them for that.

As of a month ago, during that Syria flap and our idiotic 59 cruise missile attack, they impressed me that they still haven't changed. They've never met a war they didn't love to promote.

The only real credible news organization with an even moderately dissenting narrative from the Pentagon-supplied Desert Storm propaganda on our Nooz was Radio España Exterior, and that was in Spanish. I think it's off the air now.

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"Our democratic institutions... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California," remarked Canadian politician Charlie Angus. (BBC, 11/27/18)