What is that wire that goes from the tail to the middle of the fuselage on older aircraft?

Answer 1

It's an ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) antenna. The ADF has 2 antennas...Sense antenna and Loop antenna. The wire is the sense antenna.

Answer 2

It is the HF or high frequency radio antenna. The ADF antenna is usually a much shorter, straight wire on the belly of the aircraft.

The HF radio needs a long antenna due to the low frequencies it uses.

Some aircraft use a reel that deploys a long wire trailing the machine in flight, some have a wire that runs from the top of the fuselage to the tail and then to a wingtip and some just have a wire that goes to the rudder.

HF is now being replaced by satellite communications so, as ADF, it is being phased out.

Answer 3

Why do people answer questions when they have no idea what they are talking about? The long wire down the fuselage is the sense antenna...HALF of the antenna system of the automatic direction finder (ADF). The other antenna is the loop antenna.

The ADF system picks up radio stations called non-directional beacons (NDB's). And yes, it also picks up AM radio stations.

Many new ADF systems combine the loop and sense antenna, so there is no more long wire.

Answer 4

Well it could be an ADF antennae on some airplanes, but on C-130's it is an High Frequency antennae.

Answer 5

HF.. Period. ADF runs parallel with the fuselage, HF can go anywhere, direction not important, but the length is baby!!!

Answer 6

its the Gall Bladder

Answer 7

An antenna for the automatic radio direction finder, which will give the direction to a low or medium frequency radio station. This device is basically obsolete, having been supplanted by the VOR system and now by GPS.

Answer 8

In older aircrafts, that wire was used to control the rudder obviously from the cockpit of the plane hence goes from the cockpit to the tail end which simply appears going from middle of fuselage to the tail.

Answer 9

the HF antenna

Answer 10

It's the plane's radio antenna.