THE LIFE OF WILLIAM "BILL" PETTY" The hum of the Atlantic Research Corp. laboratory was nothing compared to the absolute roar of a Navy flight deck, but in the autumn of 1965, Senior Electrical Engineer William "Bill" Petty lived between both worlds. Armed with notebooks of raw data, smith charts, and a relentless drive for precision, Bill was the man the U.S. Navy trusted to tame the chaotic electromagnetic environments of its greatest warships. His mission was vital yet invisible: measuring and resolving the Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR)across the critical 2–30 MHz high-frequency (HF) broadband spectrum. Without Bill's precise calibrations, the massive antennas broadcasting from these steel giants would lose power, overheat, or fail completely leaving the fleet deaf and blind in an increasingly tense Cold War landscape.While the world associated supercarriers like the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), USS America (CVA-66), and USS Forrestal (CVA-59) with the daytime thunder of launching aircraft, Bill knew them by their midnight rhythms. Because formal military exercises dominated the daylight hours, filling the airways with high-priority tactical transmissions, Bill and his engineering team operated almost exclusively in the late evenings and overnight. Bill Petty's Team Takes the Deck, calibrating and injecting 2–30 MHz Test Signals into Broadband Antennas. Mapping Impedance Spikes Across Massive Steel Hulls. He made use of the Noise and Field Intensity Meter, Model NF-105 . In it's day this instrument was critical to making the required measurments. Bill supervised and actively participated in the grueling work. They dragged heavy, specialized test equipment up narrow ladderwells, connecting directional couplers and RF signal generators to the bases of massive whip and wire antennas. Every piece of steel on a ship from a superstructure crane to the flight deck itself interfered with the HF signals. Bill's job was to figure out exactly how much. The work wasn't limited to the carriers. Bill brought his expertise to a diverse array of hulls across the fleet. On the USS Northampton (CC-1), a dedicated tactical command ship bristling with unique communications gear, Bill's mission was tested to its limits to ensure clear lines of communication for high-ranking admirals. On the destroyer-type ships, space was at a premium. The antennas were crowded closer together, causing severe impedance mismatches that Bill had to systematically hunt down and document.
His team worked methodically, sweeping through the megahertz bands, noting every spike in VSWR where power was reflected backward toward the transmitters instead of radiating into the ether.When the sun rose and the ships returned to their exercises, Bill returned the Atlantic Research Corp. offices, surrounded by reams of data points. Bill made good use of the unique "Smith Chart". The Smith Chart is is a powerful graphical tool used in RF and microwave engineering to design impedance matching networks with complex mathematicl a powerful graphical tool used in RF and microwave engineering to design impedance matching networks without complex mathematical calculations. Bill designed impedance matching networks for the broad and antenna. After the impedance matching gear was built , He didn't just measure problems; he fixed them. Using the extensive broadband overnight data, Bill designed highly sophisticated antenna impedance matching devices. Operating across the entire 2–30 MHz range, these custom-engineered couplers acted as a perfect transfer of the RF signals between the ship's powerful transmitters and its complex, broadband antennas. Bill and his crew would return to the ship to verify success. An interesting fact is that two of Bill's brothers served oaboard the USS Forrestal (CVA 59) during the 1950s.
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