Audio aphorism

[Fretless]

Wouldn't the rubber of the aircraft tyres act as an insulator?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Rubber can be made into a conductor, it depends on what you mix it with.

[Shevans]

Its the same with a groundplane earth when using Ham Radio in a car, insulated from the road by the tyres but still adequate to make contact 1,000s on miles away on the HF frequencies.

Airplanes have a fantastic added bonus of having their aerials a long way off the ground so propagation is fantastic. Tried using a bunch of helium balloons to carry a wire aloft many years ago but it escaped.

Not active anymore but I am G1EKM

[Geoff.R.G]

I tried to edit the previous post to correct the comment on earthing via tyres. The tyres earth the static charge that aircraft build up in flight, they work in the same way as an electrostatic wrist strap.

[Lurcher300b]

HF radio works perfectly well from aircraft too. HF and Short Wave being the same thing (3-30 MHz).

Yep, thats why I said long wave (<300kHz).

[Geoff.R.G]

HF radio works perfectly well from aircraft too. HF and Short Wave being the same thing (3-30 MHz).

Yep, thats why I said long wave (<300kHz).

I missed that part, aircraft can receive VLF perfectly well but I know of no airborne system that transmits in that range. You can of course trail a very long wire aerial if necessary but SatCom makes world-wide communication possible at much higher quality with fewer disadvantages. SatCom also has sufficient bandwidth for data which would be impossibly slow at VLF.

[Daniel Quinn]

I tried to edit the previous post to correct the comment on earthing via tyres. The tyres earth the static charge that aircraft build up in flight, they work in the same way as an electrostatic wrist strap.

editing restricted to 1/2 hour to stop after the fact re writing of history. Good job Winston Smith doesn't work for h/s he would be out of a job.

[Geoff.R.G]

I tried to edit the previous post to correct the comment on earthing via tyres. The tyres earth the static charge that aircraft build up in flight, they work in the same way as an electrostatic wrist strap.

editing restricted to 1/2 hour to stop after the fact re writing of history. Good job Winston Smith doesn't work for h/s he would be out of a job.

I expected that but the site locked up when I tried, which I didn't expect.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Shouldn't do that, PM terrybooth about it.

[Geoff.R.G]

Shouldn't do that, PM terrybooth about it.

Done