| Part of a series on |
| Antennas |
|---|
 |
An antenna rotator (or antenna rotor) is a device used to change the orientation, within the horizontal plane, of a directional antenna. Most antenna rotators have two parts, the rotator unit and the controller. The controller is normally placed near the equipment which the antenna is connected to, while the rotator is mounted on the antenna mast directly below the antenna.
Rotators are commonly used in amateur radio and military communications installations. They are also used with TV and FM antennas, where stations are available from multiple directions, as the cost of a rotator is often significantly less than that of installing a second antenna to receive stations from multiple directions.
Rotators are manufactured for different sizes of antennas and installations. For example, a consumer TV antenna rotator has enough torque to turn a TV/FM or small ham antenna. These units typically cost around US$70 [when?].
Heavy-duty ham rotators are designed to turn extremely large, heavy, high frequency (shortwave) beam antennas, and cost hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars.
In the center of the reference picture, the accompanying image includes an AzEl installation rotator, so named for its controlling of both the azimuth and the elevation components of the direction of an antenna system or array. Such antenna configurations are used in, for example, amateur radio satellite or moon-bounce communications.
An open hardware AzEl rotator system is provided by the SatNOGS Groundstation project.
The Alliance Manufacturing Co. of Alliance, Ohio, and the Astatic Corporation of Conneaut, Ohio, manufactured popular radio and TV booster and rotary antenna systems. These products were heavily advertised for radio use in newspapers starting in the early 1940s,[1] and for use with commercial television sets from 1949 into the 1960s. Cinécraft Productions, a pioneer in early TV advertising, produced six commercials for the Astatic Booster TV in 1949 and 112 for the Alliance Tenna-Rotor, Tenna-Scope, and Casca-Matic Booster between 1949 and 1955.[2]