SANAE antarctic groundstation

There is a simple VHF/UHF groundstation in the antarctic at the South African Antarctic expedition's base, SANAE. The picture below shows the VHF and UHF eggbeaters used for this groundstation. The UHF one in the back is the normal commercial m2 eggbeater, but the VHF one next to ZS4AGA (having a bad hair day) was rebuilt to survive the extreme wind conditions at SANAE.

The VHF/UHF antennas had to survive -40°C temperatures and 200 km/h wind. It was hoped that they would survive one winter. Up to date these antennas have survived windspeeds of 280 km/h and three antarctic winters.


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