Cloudburners

A "cloudburner" is basically any transmitting antenna that radiates straight up into the clouds.

I spotted this pair behind a house on Massasoit Road, just after Lamar Ave. I checked to see if it was visible on Google Maps Street View (pictures taken last summer), but there was no sign of it, so it must be fairly new.

I've built my fair share of cloudburners over the years, only because setting up an antenna for amateur radio use on the amateur 40, 80, and 160 meter bands that AREN'T cloudburners requires a lot more height than my small piece of property will handle. A simple antenna on 40 meters, for example, needs to be up in the air at least 10 meters (over 30 feet, or a quarter wavelength) before the ground stops absorbing most of the signal, and what's left stops just going straight up. (I'm simplifying here, just for the sake of the uninitiated.)

At 80 and 160 meters, two very popular bands for amateur operation, the height for an effective antenna goes up to 20 meters (65 feet) and 40 meters (130 feet), respectively, before the cloudburner phenomenon gets taken out of play and the antenna actually starts performing efficiently.

This is a picture of a simple dipole antenna made out of TV twinlead wire. It's the kind of antenna that you'd tape to your wall in order to better receive your favorite low power or distant FM stations.

Since the FM band is much higher in frequency, the length of the antenna needs to be much shorter for a half wavelength. This would be a cloudburner if you set it up outside, but only a foot or less above the ground.

I really couldn't guess which bands those two cloudburners in the first picture are for, but they'll work just fine to receive and transmit to lots of other amateur stations, because propagation is always the main factor in ham radio. The more wire or aluminum a ham puts into the air, and the higher it is, the more stations they'll be able to talk to. Getting this fancy for such low heights above ground, though, is probably just a waste of time.