Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/172

 better than before and thus it was that the T, or flat-top aerial came to be.

To get the best results the aerials of two stations communicating with each other should both be vertical or flat-top, that is, a vertical wire will not receive from a flat-top nearly as well as from another one that is vertical and this is just as true the other way about. As all ships are fitted with flat-top aerials and as the Eiffel Tower aerial is neither the one kind nor the other but a sloping aerial and hence would receive from a flat-top as well as from a vertical aerial the Navy Department decided to use the T or flat-top aerial on the Arlington station.

We assembled, tested and put up the three flat-top aerials between the towers and connected them together so that in effect a single long aerial was formed. Porcelain insulators of the kind on which high tension power transmission lines are carried are used to insulate the aerials from the towers. The leading-in cable runs from the aerials to which it is connected down to the operating room through a copper tube set in a glass window.

The ground is formed of copper wires buried