To be brief: At a prior QTH a 100' tower was topped by 4 el 10/15/20 monobanders and shunt fed for 160. I started with 20 radials ranging from 60-130' to fit the property. Performance sucked for chasing DX. After going to 60 radials I was able to work DX but only after a lot of effort. This was with 1200W. I didnt think another 60 was going to be magic and the effort was a PITA..
Next I laid down 5 50x4' lengths of 2x4" welded, then galvanized and plastic coated fencing and connected to the #6 copper ring with short #12 stranded copper jumpers. All of this was across the street from a fresh water swamp and the water table was about 3' down in the back yard. Several 8' ground rods probably helped with lightning protection but did squat for RF, except for a thin layer of top soil it was all glacial sand. The results were amazing, I blew thru pileups and quickly blew past DXCC. The station also won a 160 contest and a pair of DX contests and confirmed the first 160M JA from northern New England. This seemed to support Sevicks paper that a lot of metal close to the base was more effective than spread over acres of poor soil. Nothing scientific claimed, just the end results. When I moved here I decided to try elevated radials using sloping wire elements hanging from guy wires of a 160' tower (now 180') for a phased pair. The reason for this was solid rock from 8-24" down everywhere, this was on top of the highest hill within many miles. The only instrumentation was watching the feed impedance change as I added radials which were 130' of either #16 solid enameled copper or stranded and insulated #18. These were 10-12' above ground and run thru tree branches and scrub bushes thru mostly woods. No thought to velocity factor or coupling to the trees was given or cared about. Going from 16 to 32 radials yielded no discernible change in the impedance so I stopped there. Phasing was simple coax lines and relays for a pair of cardiod and a figure 8 pattern. This yielded an effective 15db or better F/B or F/S depending on the pattern which was good enough as I was listening on Beverages and really didnt care about rejection, just gain and performance in the aimed directions. As DX and contest results showed the antenna kicked a**. That counts alot more than reams of boring papers dreamed up by academia operating under the publish or perish laws of their little clubs. Last year I tore everything apart for a rebuild and started by actually measuring the RF ground resistance so I could wind proper transformers for the new 2 wire reversible Beverages. It ran 200-250 Ohms over about 10 acres for 600-900' Beverages. This sort of explains why the elevated radials worked so well and supported the decision to not even bother attempting on ground radials. Ive also read several BCB reports where stations that rebuilt or started new with elevated radials had to reduce power to conform with initial as built field strength measurements as well as the new installs by using simple field strength charts and math for the "perfect" on ground system. So much for comments on a useless antenna forum where the "experts" refused to accept this. They probably still have their heads where the sun dont shine. Carl KM1H _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
