The Elephant Cage Antenna
03 May
Posted by RD Bentley as Amateur Radio, Technology
The Wullenweber Array (CDDA): An Era Of Intelligence Gathering
The Wullenweber was a monster sized antenna invented by Dr. Hans Rindfleisch, which was informally called the elephant cage. The elephant cage or Circularly Disposed Dipole Array (CDDA), was circular and was used for spying. Was the elephant cage antenna the predecessor of HAARP?
The elephant cage was used by the US military for intelligence, but was originally developed by the German Navy. It was very large, expensive, and impractical for the average amateur radio operator.
“Professor Edgar Hayden, then a young engineer in the University of Illinois Radio Direction Finding Research Group, led the design and development of a large Wullenweber array at the university’s Bondville Road Field Station, a few miles southwest of Bondville, IL. The array consisted of a ring 120 vertical monopoles covering 2-20 MHz. Tall wood poles supported a 1,000-foot-diameter circular screen of vertical wires located within the ring of monopoles. Due to their immense size, the location of the array (40.0494°N 88.3807°W) and the other post-war arrays are clearly visible on the internet.”
Edward C. Jordan participated in nine books and published numerous articles. His popular textbook, Electromagnetic Waves and Radiating Systems, was first published in 1950.
Jordan’s follow-up book was Electromagnetic Waves and Radiating Systems Second Edition.
Wullenweber research lasted for more than 25 years and the US Navy constructed systems around the world.
“The ring of poles is an elaborate radio antenna system that was developed for the US Navy in the 1950’s and 60’s by the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Illinois in the farmland a few miles southwest of Bondville, about five miles west of Champaign, Illinois. Following the completion of the University’s development work, the Bondville installation, known as the Bondville Road Field Station (BRFS), was abandoned in approximately 1980, partially dismantled in the 1990’s, and in 2003, was completely dismantled.”
https://onthesquid.com/2013/05/the-elephant-cage-antenna/