Albert's Attic Gallery

‘The Maximus’! What a splendid name for an aerial! Later came the Explorer, the Hunter, the Supreme, and many more, but I like Maximus the best! Rather than using a folded dipole to achieve correct impedance matching, the Maximus had an adjustable matching stub. I didn’t know that 50O coax was ever used for domestic TV aerials. I’ve never seen a Maximus ‘in the flesh’, and I doubt if I ever will, but it looks well made. Was the mast wooden, I wonder? Conductive masts were always a bit of a problem with vertically polarised Band I aerials.

The Telecraft loft aerial seems not to have been given a name, alas. All the major manufacturers made loft aerials of this basic design. The middle element is driven, and is a quarter wavelength. (A ‘driven’ element is the one that actually collects the signal, as opposed to a director or reflector). In later models the driven element was telescopic to allow for different channels. The other two elements would ideally be hung downwards so that the whole thing became a half wave dipole, but often they had to be positioned horizontally on the floor of the loft. In that case they became a groundplane for the quarter wave driven element. Alternatively they could be angled upwards, and this gave the aerial slight directional properties, though I must say this was a bit hit and miss.

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