I'll have to go on record as disagreeing with Matt, W6NIA's statement below. Elevated radials *are* better than buried radials only *if* the vertical is not ground-mounted and the radials are tuned to resonance for each band.
With ground-mounted verticals, the radials need not be tuned and do a better job if a large quantity of them are spread out on or below the ground. I would not use elevated radials with a ground-mounted vertical. Terry W0FM -----Original Message----- From: Matt Zilmer [mailto:mzil...@verizon.net] Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 12:33 PM To: Randy Cook Cc: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Subject: Re: [Elecraft] OT- Radials for Vertical Antenna Elevated radials are better than buried, but more radials are better than a few or none. A good minimum number (for each band) would be 8. Many studies on this have shown many more than 8 per band (like > 25) is much better and, of course, much harder and expensive to field. I have a 33' vertical made of heavywall aluminum that has 7 radials for 40m and another 7 for 15m. It works well enough, but generally I use it as an RX ANT for the K3's sub rx. In my own case, the radials are buried for aesthetic reasons. Plus, I don't want to need to duck down when mowing. There is no ATU at the base of this vertical. When using this antenna for RMS Winmor (for Navy-Marine Corps MARS) just below 40m, it had no trouble handling all states west of the Mississippi with 150W drive. I would say that you should do what you can to maximize the radial count, even if it means changing your location plan. 73, matt W6NIA ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
