The Platteville high power facility

Abstract

The Department of Commerce's Platteville transmitter facility has been used to modify the ionosphere since 1970. Design concepts and a description of major components at the facility are discussed. When used for ionospheric modification studies, one of two 10‐element ring‐array antennas, each producing right‐ or left‐handed circularly polarized signals, is excited by a transmitter which develops up to 2 Mw of average power. These arrays permit operation in the frequency range from 2.7 to 10 MHz, as required to approximately match varying ionospheric critical frequencies.