"Sterba Curtain" FM antenna info needed
Robear4
Back in 1991 "Audio" magazine ran a brief article on a couple of simple indoor
FM antennas you could build that they claimed would out perform the simple wire
dipole. One was called a "collinear " wire antenna that was supposed to offer
a 3.2 db gain over the simple dipole's "0" gain.
Another design they mentioned was called the "Sterba Curtain" named after it's
inventor E. J. Sterba. They claimed this type of simple indoor antenna offered
over 6db of gain, comparable to an outdoor mast-type antenna. The article was
brief and didn't go into much detail on how to construct this antenna. Has
anyone ever heard anything else on this "Sterba" antenna? I would be
interested in hearing from anyone who built the antenna and what their
experience was with it in receiving FM signals. About 10 years ago I built one
of "Audio's" other antenna projects and the results were disappointing.
Please send your response to my email address listed below. Thank you.
Chuck Ross
(Robear4) wrote:
The Sterba Curtain is a VERY large array which has tremendous gain, is
quite directional and has long-distance propagation, but generally was useful
only for HF transmission. It was sucessfully used during WW-II
by the US to beam powerful Voice of America radio to Europe. I had a ham
radio pal who actually built one for the 20-meter band. It consisted of
three telephone poles and many hundreds of feet of heavy copper wire and
coax. I've never heard of a curtain being used for FM reception.
Construction details can be found in the several books on antennas published
by the American Radio Relay League. The disadvantage of such an antenna, altho
it might be actually usable for FM is that it is confined to one direction,
unless you build several of them, a very formidable undertaking.
Chuck Ross
http://www.danbury.lib.ct.us/org/cara/feb_prog.html
http://www.palmtop.net/img/voa.jpg
http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/97/971219/
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/4208/hc9801.html
http://www.exit109.com/~jimh/voanc1.shtml
http://www.contesting.com/_antennaware/9804/0018.html
You can see a couple of photos of one of the enormous VOA Sterba
Curtain support towers coming down.