Albert's Attic Gallery

In the 1950s and 1960s the FM broadcast band only included the lower half (roughly) of the band as we know it now. Although many radios would tune up as far as 102 or even 108MHz, there were no broadcasts above 95MHz. FM aerials were designed to cover just the 7MHz of bandwidth that was actually in use. When the police were finally moved from the band and the upper reaches became available for broadcast use the aerial manufacturers needed to bring out products that covered the full 20MHz.

One ploy was the ‘Trumatch’ dipole, as seen here. Comprising a straight centre-fed dipole and a shorter parasitic matcher, the Trumatch had adequate bandwidth. This, together with some shortening of the directors gave good performance across the whole band.

Thanks to Roger Piper for this contribution.

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