AS-2259 Ant

Background

The AS-2259, NSN 5980-00-106-6130, is rated for 2 to 30 Mhz and up to 1,000 Watts. The antenna is said to be compatible with radios that typically use a 15 foot whip antenna. Also known as the Collins 637K-1 antenna or Telex Wireless Model 1990.

Military H.F. radios typically use a vertical whip antenna, like the AS-1320 on the PRC-47. The whip works against ground by means of a number of radials. The main lobe is at right angles to the centerline of the antenna or parallel to the ground. This works well for distances up to about 70 miles (ground wave) [FM 24-19 says 10 miles for a man portable radio and 15 foot whip] or for very large distances corresponding to one or more hops off of the ionosphere (greater than 300 miles). If the H.F. radio is located in a valley or jungle these whip antennas do not work very well and so the Near Vertical Incidence Sky wave antenna was developed.

An NVIS antenna has it's main lobe pointing straight up (or nearly so). The idea is to bounce the signal off the ionosphere and have it reflect straight down. This provides a strong signal out to 200 to 300 miles in all directions. This is the largest coverage area you can get with a single receiver transmitter without a repeater. Note that squad radios operating in the 30 to 88 MHz VHF low band are designed NOT to have long range to prevent the enemy from eavesdropping. Classical H.F. radio using antennas on high towers is designed to provide long haul communications. NVIS is ideal at providing solid communications that fill the gap between these two modes, out to a radius of 200 ot 300 miles.

The ideal height would be 1/4 wave above a metal surface. The would put the main lobe straight up. If you don't have a metal plated back yard but instead have dirt for ground the depth of the effective ground plane will be some distance below the surface. In sandy or rocky areas that may be very far down, in which case the antenna can be laid on the surface or buried.

When the height of the antenna is lowered the dirt acts as a resistive shunt on the antenna lowering the transmit efficiency and also lowering the receive noise.

The "D" layer gets charged by the sun on a daily basis. So near noon it has the most charge. The "D" layer has a resonance around 1.6 (? memory) MHz and that's where it has the highest loss. The farther away from 1.6 Mhz the less D layer adsorption there is. So NVIS is not a mode that will work for the AM broadcast band. This is also why most military field portable HF radios have a frequency range like 2 - 12 MHz. The lower end is limited by the D layer and the upper end is limited by the NVIS mode since it's very difficult to put a dipole up a 1/4 wave in the field.

When radials are used with a whip antenna the coupling to the Earth is lossy. Antennas that are balanced like a dipole have higher efficiency because they do not suffer from ground loss. NVIS antennas are about an average of 10 feet off the ground and do not suffer from ground losses. Some NVIS antenna systems, like the Eyring, operate a foot or so off the ground.

4743917 Apparatus and method for a portable roll-out antenna (Eyring Research Institute, Inc.), May 10, 1988, 343/877 ; 242/388.6
4755824 Hardened coupling device and method, (Eyring Research Institute, Inc.), Jul 5, 1988, 343/719 ; 174/50
4829310 Wireless communication system using current formed underground vertical plane polarized antennas, (Eyring Research Institute, Inc.), May 9 1989, 343/719 ; 343/847
4839661 Guided wave antenna system and method, (Eyring Research Institute, Inc.), Jun 13, 1989, 343/719 ; 343/847
4861289 Hardened electrical connector, (Eyring Research Institute, Inc.), Aug 29, 1989, 439/792 ; 174/87; 439/790

4750001 Portable roll-out antenna system and method, Brian L. Grose, Craig M. Huntsman (Eyring Research Institute, Inc.), Jun 7, 1988, 343/877

Calls:
1894244 Antenna Reel, Jan 10 1933, -
2161044 Antenna Reel, (Heintz & Kaufman), - Aircraft
2574733 Tape Antenna System, (Tele-Tonic Radio Corp), -
2834012 Variable Length Antenna, (Army), - tanks, cars, trucks, etc.
2842768 Extensible Antenna, (Stirling Precision Inst Co), -multiple tapes combine
3400402 Wire Antenna Extensible Along Calibrated Support Means, (Collins) - GRA-50?
3577148 Portable Reelable Dipole Antenna having Frequency Calibratied Dial (Collins) - Collins TD-1, 637T-2

4825224 Broad band impedance matching system and method for low-profile antennas, Brian L. Grose, Orval N. Skousen ( Eyring Research Institute, Inc), 343/860 ; 343/822 -

Calls:
714246 Nov 1902
760463 May 1904
795762 Jul 1905
1101533 Jun 1914
1123119 Dec 1914
1220005 Mar 1917
1303729 May 1919
1303730 May 1919
1315862 Sep 1919
1316188 Sep 1919
1322622 Nov 1919
1349103 Aug 1920
1349104 Aug 1920
1373612 Apr 1921
1377129 May 1921
1387736 Aug 1921
1395454 Nov 1921
1424365 Aug 1922
1429240 Radio Signaling System Sep 1922 - buried electrodes
1510799 Loop Aerial, Oct 1924
1530129 Radio Signaling System, E.H Loftin & H.H. Lyon, Mar 1925 - includes wire buries inside pipe

References:
760463 Marconi, May 1904
771819 De Forest Oct 1904
795762 Garcia July 1905
1101533 De Forest July 1905
1220005 Rogers & Lyon March 1917
1303730 Rogers May 1919
1322622 Rogers & Lyon Nov 1919

1894244 Antenna Reel, Jan 10 1933, - Jan 1933
2161044 Antenna Reel, (Heintz & Kaufman), - Aircraft Jun 1939
2225668 Method and Apparatus for Logging Drill Holes, (Union Oil), Dec 1940
2574733 Tape Antenna System, (Tele-Tonic Radio Corp), - Nov 1951
2712602 Reflection-free Antenna, (Ericson), Jul 1955 - log periodic?
2834012 Variable Length Antenna, (Army), - tanks, cars, trucks, etc. May 1958
2842768 Extensible Antenna, (Stirling Precision Inst Co), -multiple tapes combine Jul 1958
2989621 Fire alarm System using a Plural Oscillator Radio Transmitter (Jennings Radio), Jun 1961 - wireless fire box system
2992325 Earth Signal Transmission System, Space Electronics Corp), Jul 1961
2998516 Subsurface Relay Station Apparatus, (Space Electronics Corp), Aug 1961
3183510 Underground Loop Antenna, (Deeco Electronics), May 1965 - Nuke hardened
3212093 Center-fed Whip Antenna, (Army), Oct 1965 - works after bening broken below the feed point
3215937 Extremely Low-frequency antenna, R.L. Tanner (CDC), Nov 1965 - array for use below 1 kHz
3346864 Underground Antenna, (Northrop), Oct 1967 - blast proof
3400402 Wire Antenna Extensible Along Calibrated Support Means, (Collins) - GRA-50? Sep 1968
3435457 Underground Antenna, (Army) Mar 1969 - blast proof
3577148 Portable Reelable Dipole Antenna having Frequency Calibratied Dial (Collins) - Collins TD-1, 637T-2 May 1971
3594798 Underground Antenna, (Westinghouse) Jul 1971 - nuke hardned
3705407 Radio Surface Wave Antenna, (SRI), Dec 1972 - looks like above ground oil pipeline
3775772 Ultra Hard Communications Antenna (Air Force), Nov 1973
3803616 Sub-surface Radio Surface Wave Launcher (SRI), Apr 1974
3867710 Communication System (IT&T), Feb 1975 - floating submarine antenna
3967201 Wireless subterranean signaling method Jun 29, 1976 - 1000 meters loop down a borehole
4511898 Terminated inverted V antenna with matching transformer Apr 16, 1985 - 1.8 to 30 MHz 110' long x 35' center mast
4687445 Subsurface antenna system (RCA), Aug 18, 1987 - survivable

The AS-2259 was designed for light weight single man carry and is NOT optimized for NVIS performance. The electrical performance has been traded for weight. The NVIS mode can only be used at the low end of the H.F. frequency range around 2 to 9 MHz depending on the ionosphere.

The GRA-50 is a NVIS type dipole made for use with the GRC-19 vehicle mounted HF radio.

In Vietnam the enemy H.F. operators were using NVIS antennas, probably for the reasons stated above, and the loop antennas on the PRD-1 direction finder receivers would not give good bearings on signals coming almost straight down. (It seems that someone would have made an Adcock antenna attachment for the PRD-1 to counter this problem?)

The term NVIS was coined either late or just post Vietnam era, but the mode was understood and used much earlier.

My house is located in a forest canyon with 80 foot high trees all around. By using NVIS I can communicate with stations out many hundreds of miles, but it's difficult to get a "low angle" signal out either on HF or on VHF-UHF.

The Harris PRC-150 (replacement for the PRC-104) lists the following antennas:

OE-505 10-foot (3 m) whip (1.6 to 60 MHz)
RF-1936P (AS-2259) NVIS (3.5 to 10 MHZ) - two versions, one the stock AS-2259 the other on a taller mast
RF-1940-BNC dipole (3 to 60 MHz)

NVIS

Near Vertical Incidence Skywave is a system for H.F. communications that involves bouncing the signal off the ionosphere where the signal is going almost straight up. The maximum frequency that will work changes with the Sun spot number, season of the year and time of day but typically is in the 1.8 to 12 MHz range.
It was known prior to W.W. II and reinvented for Vietnam. The main advantage is solid communications out for hundreds of miles in all directions without any skip zones. It works in mountains, i.e. the signal is going pretty much straight up and down. The signal is difficult to D.F. since it's coming down and not "from" any compass bearing. The disadvantage is that the frequency needs to be properly chosen. That can be done by using an on line propagation map, a chirp sounder, or ALE.

July 2009 there has been an interesting discussion of the history of NVIS as well as of the term "NVIS" on the NVIS Yahoo Group.

Other names for this are:

Australian District Antenna

Russian Zenith Radiation

Marine Showerhead Antenna

short range ionoshperic propagation

AS-2259 Description

The Antenna System 2259 consists 7 mast sections, each about 2 feet long that are 50 Ohm coax hard lines. There's a male end and a female end. At the top there are 4 antenna elements that are used as guy lines to support the antenna. The short antenna element is 2 * 24'10" long and the long antenna element is 2 * 36'10" long. A short and a long element are connected to the outer (ground) side of the mast/coax and the other short and long elements are connected to the mast center (hot) conductor. The AS-2259 does not include the base adapter. There are a number of different base adapters to connect the AS-2259 to a number of different radios or to use it as a stand alone antenna.

A half wave dipole that's 49'8" long (15.1 meters) has a self reasonant frequency of 9.9 MHz and a half wave dipole that's 73'8" (22.5 meteres) long has a self reasonant frequency of 6.7 MHz. These get transformed by the 14 foot long 50 Ohm impedance mast.

Sewn on the inside of the canvas carry bag are the Instructions for Installation and a Parts Breakdown. I've made these into a pdf document AS2259Ins.pdf about 290 kB..

Harris makes wersions of this antenna called the RF-1936 (same as AS-2259), RF-2236 and the double sized RF-2238

Base Adapters

MX-9313	NSN 5985-00-172-6518 base adapter is used with heavy H.F. radio sets such as the AN/TRC-75, AN/MRC-83, AN/MRC-87, AN/TRC-15 or similar radios that use a 1-8 male thread on the antenna base or coupler. The AT-1011 is an antenna whose base has female 1x8 threads. The Telex model 1996 is also a 1-8 thread adapter. Flying ground wire. (maybe the same part with a different model #?)
MX-10618/GRC-193A	Base adapter allows the AS-2259 to sit on top of MS-116 type mobile or fixed HF antenna bases and has a ground wire to connect to the vehicle ground. Of course the AS-2259 can only be depolyed when the vehicle is parked. Bottom hole is about 0.635" I.D. and has male fingers to fit into a hole in the mating antenna base. Note the threads for the MS-116 start some distance down the hole. This is the AB-652 base that uses MS-116 type mast elements or any base that accepts the MS-116 type antenna elements.
	The MX-10618 is shown here installed on the MP-68 Base that the heart of the RC-292 VHF Low Band antenna. The MP-68 takes the MS-116 Base element both as the lower vertical element and as the first of the 3 ground plane elements. Note the AB-15 Antenna Base is part of the MP-68 and is the actual base that the MX-10618 is designed to be used on.
NSN 5985-00-106-6130 PRC-47 Base Adapter	is a base adapter that screws into the antenna connection on a PRC-47. The 3/8-16 threaded stud on the bottom screws into the antenna terminal on top of the PRC-47. Note when the support legs are unfolded on the PRC-47 the front panel is facing the sky. This supports the use of a whip connected directly to the front panel high voltage antenna terminal. It includes an antenna tuning chart attached by chain, for the PRC-47. I tlooks similar to the one on the PRC-47 used with the AS-1320 whip, but the curves are for the AS-2259.
Home made adapters based on PRC-47 base adapter. The PRC-47 is probably the most common base and so is often used to make other types of bases.
	If 4 holes are drilled & tapped up into the bottom of this base adapter it can be mounted on a metal box that has a clearance hole for the 3/8-16 stud. Then a coax connector can be installed on the metal box with a wire between the coax center and the 3/8-16 stud using a wire terminal and nut. These photos are from Mike prcradio at yahoo.com
	There's a 6-32 screw holding the coax center conductor terminal to the center conductor of the PRC-47 base adapter. Not sure if that tapped screw hole is already part of the adapteror if it needs to be added.
	Edmund supplied photos of this base.
Telex 1994	is like the Telex 1995 except there is no transformer and it's rated for 1 kW. Thumb screws for ground and hot wires. This is one of the bases with the flat metal plate with a number of holes. The mast part will fold flat aginst the metal base to make carryng in a pack easier.
Telex 1995	Rated 50 Watts. Has a built in 4:1 transformer allowing easier matching to a PRC-104. The base is a square metal plate with a hinge. For ground mounting. BNC connector. NSN 5820-01-065-4495 Another flat metal base plate unit.
Edmund supplied photos of this base. Top Label: BASE, ANTENNA P.N. 1995AA HY-GAIN Div - TELEX COMMUNICATIONS, INC. MFG CODE 37919 Bottom Label: MAXIMUM POWER INPUT 50 WATTS RF
Telex 1997	Adapter has male 3/16-16 thread to screw into the PRC-47 and 1-8 male threads to screw into the 1996 adapter. Using this method two adapters are used to connect the AS-2259 to a PRC-47.
Telex 1998	base adapter mates to the AB652 Antenna Base. Flying ground wire.
AB-1241/PRC-104	Although this looks like a patio umbrella base, it's only about 8 inches in diameter (some refer to it as the hubcap base). There's an R.F. transformer inside so an Ohm meter shows a short between all the possible terminals. I tried using this base with the AS-2259 and a 50 foot long RG-58 coax to the AM-6874/PRC-104 RF Amp/Ant coupler and it seems to work at 18 MHz, but it's questionable at 4 MHz when the AM-6874 is set for a 50 Ohm antenna (i.e. no tuner). The TM for the PRC-104 says to use a 2 foot cable between the Radio and this base. That's consistent with the idea that the balun is not providing a match to 50 Ohms, but rather is bringing the impedance of the antenna into a range where the PRC-104 antenna coupler can work with. Note impedance has real and imaginary parts and in this case the real part is probably what's mainly being transformed. (At 2 MHz a diploe is much much longer than the wires on the AS-2259 and so it's real impedance is very low, too low to match directly.)

At 18 MHz if the coax + Antenna Tuner mode is selected the PRC-104 tries for about 12 seconds to tune up then sounds a warning tone.
All this testing is with the SA-2365 Antenna switch disconnected.

4 Aug 2004 - used a couple of prototype 55590BA Battery adapters to power the PRC-104 and about a 1 foot long BNC cable to connect to make the antenna connection. In the BNC-Tuner mode the radio tuned up in just a few seconds on 3996 and 5371.5 kHz, so my base is OK.

Since the AS-2259 can be used over a wide range of frequencies there's no way any passive circuit in the AB-1241 can provide a 50 Ohm match, except by using a termination, and that would not be a good thing to do with a low power battery operated transmitter. It's just a 4:1 auto transformer that brings the low real part of the antenna impedance up to some value that can be more efficiently matched and maybe adds some inductance to an antenna that looks like a capacitor.

Some experiments done by David Brock indicate that by clipping wires onto the longer AS-2259 elements to bring them into resonance (make a low dipole), the performance improves to nearly what you would get with a higher dipole.

References

Related NVIS Antennas.

Eyring used to make an NVIS antenna.
http://www.eyring.com/ - (computer stuff, BUT ->) NVIS antennas http://www.eyring.com/sim/302a.htm - Patents:
4743917 Apparatus and method for a portable roll-out antenna
4750001 Portable roll-out antenna system and method
4755824 Hardened coupling device and method
4825224 Broad band impedance matching system and method for low-profile antennas
4829310 Wireless communication system using current formed underground vertical plane polarized antennas
4839661 Guided wave antenna system and method
4861289 Hardened electrical connector

The patents might lead you to think this was a general purpose H.F. antenna, but that 's not the case. It's a non optimal NVIS antenna that's packaged in a very space efficient manner. An optimum NVIS antenna is up at least 1/10 wavelength above the dirt. As the antenna is lowered the receive noise level goes down and the transmitted signal strength goes down.
H.F. Link - ELPA 302A information

Eyring ELPA antenna

OE-452 SORAK

Special Operations Radio Antenna Kit SORAK HF antenna, NSN 5985-01-279-7942
One of the possible configurations is for NVIS.

Home Brew

Tried a horizontal loop made using 8 each 10 foot 2x4 supports arranged as an octagon with a radius to a central point of about 26 feet. Did not work.

Antenna Height

For NVIS the antenna should be between 1/10 and 1/4 wavelength above dirt.

Example for 80m:
For optimum Tx signal 1/4 wave high is 20m and (using 3 feet per meter) is about 60 feet for best transmission.
For ease of installation 1/10 wave high is 8m or about 24 feet.

Wire Antennas

Wire Antennas can be used for NVIS, i.e. it depends on the frequency and antenna height.

Patents

4510500 Aircraft shorted loop antenna with impedance matching and amplification at Feed Point, John F. Brune (Army), Apr 9 1985, 343/708; 343/845; 343/861; 455/193

Intended for nap of the Earth H.F. coms in the 2 to 10 MHz range using SSB. Includes an active circuit that's connected to the loop element for both Tx and Rx.

Calls:
2913722 Broad Band Vertical Antenna, H. Brueckmann (Army) Nov 17 1959, 343/724 ; 343/729; 343/830; 343/861; 343/876 - may be for the AS-1729 VHF low band whip
3818480 Method and Apparatus for Controlling the Directivity Pattern of an Antenna, R.H. West (Magnavox), Jun 18, 1974
4186350 Antenna tuning circuit Jan 29, 1980
4339827 Automatic tuning circuit arrangement with switched impedances Jul 13, 1982
4343001 Digitally tuned electrically small antenna Aug 3, 1982
4403347 Antenna tuning circuit for AM radio receiver Sep 6, 1983

3435457 Underground Antenna, H. Brueckmann (Army) Mar 25 1969, 343/719 ; 343/873; 343/899 - blast proof

3518684 Duplex Antenna Systems for Aircraft, H. Brueckmann (Army), Jun 30 1970 - allows duplex HF ops in chopper

3587102 Helicopter Skid Antenna, W.P. Czerwinski (Army), Jun 22 1971, 343/708 ; 343/744; 343/788; 343/803 - HF & VHF coverage loop

Links

page[an error occurred while processing this directive] page created 25 Nov 2003.

AS-2259/GR NVIS Antenna

and NVIS in General

Background

NVIS

AS-2259 Description

Base Adapters

MX-9313

MX-10618/GRC-193A

NSN 5985-00-106-6130 PRC-47 Base Adapter

Home made adapters based on PRC-47 base adapter.

Telex 1994

Telex 1995

Telex 1997

Telex 1998