In recent years we have been holidaying at Palm Cove FNQ. On the jetty there is a met. installation that measures tides, wave height etc. But the one thing that has intrigued me is what looks like an HF antenna. It is made of aluminium so it cannot be a multi wavelength vhf antenna. I have been trying to think of a reason for using HF for relaying info from the installation there but I am at a loss. It must be to cover reasonable distances.If someone wants to scale the antenna the gentleman standing on the deck below it is a six footer or very close in my judgement.
Possibly a receiving station for an offshore wave monitoring buoy (Cains). The Buoy is located about 6kms offshore from Palm Cove.
The Buoy may be using HF to send data back to the met office and this could be the receiving station. the antenna looks to be a quarter wave.
the hf data link uses frequencies in the range of 25Mhz to 40Mhz and the would put the antenna about 2.5m long at 30 Mhz.
The Shorter antenna could be a cellphone (4g) the send the received data back to the office.
