Combined vibration/temperature/sideload environmental testing of UHF blade antennas

Service problems encountered on the F-4 aircraft showed that the environmental qualification requirements for the UHF blade antenna were not adequate. Although the individual environmental levels were stringent enough, only combined environmental testing could duplicate the conditions in which service problems occurred. Techniques for applying static side load simultaneously with vibration and temperature were developed. The combined environment testing was instrumental in the rapid assessment of antenna modifications and resulted in a final configuration which proved satisfactory in service. A need to include combined environmental testing for qualification of blade antennas was established.