Subsurface Antennas

Subsurface (buried or submerged) antennas have obvious military and espionage advantages. In addition to stealth invisibility, they are relatively hardened against nuclear blasts compared to above-surface designs. The comparative-merits of many designs have been studied theoretically and in practical tests, but most of that is classified. There have been several cycles of amateur interest over the past 90 years. A number of websites currently have information about buried antennas, but a large part of that is pure nonsense. The bottom-line is that optimally-designed subsurface antennas do not work as well as typical above-surface designs, but they work better than most people would expect and they can be used both for transmission and reception of LF, MF, HF, VHF and UHF signals over considerable distances. ©2004 Tigertek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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