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United States military radio antenna kites


Radio antenna kites are used to carry a radio antenna aloft, higher than is practical with a mast. They are most often associated with portable radio systems, usually with pre-World War I field equipment, and were also occasionally used to increase radio range on Naval ships. The use of kite supported antennae was limited because of difficulty in maintaining consistent antenna height, unpredictability of the wind, and improvements in radio antenna, transmission, and reception. During World War II and after they were used in conjunction with survival radios issued to aircraft flying over-water missions.

Before their radio use, kites were used by the United States and other nations' armed forces for observation, aerial photography, and signaling. They were used non-militarily to hoist radio antennae at least since 1898 when Greenleaf Whittier Pickard used a small box kite, normally used for meteorological observations, to raise a wire half a mile up for wireless tests at the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts.

On December 12, 1901 Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, England, to St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. The antenna at St. John’s was carried by a Baden-Powell Levitor kite, designed by Baden Baden-Powell as a man carrying observation kite.

The first kite used by the United States Army Signal Corps specifically for raising an antenna was designed and built by Sergeant Thomas I. King, Signal Corps Company A, while stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1905. The “King” kite was large, 7 feet high and 5 feet wide, made of 50 yards of white Japanese silk on a bamboo frame, and weighed less than 2 pounds. Similar to Silas J. Conyne's kite of 1902, it had a diamond shape with a squared-off top and bottom, keel, and large opening in the center to give it some of the stability of a box kite. It was used either singly or in trains of 2 to 4 kites or, on less windy days, in conjunction with a balloon to provide extra lift.


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