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Re: [TowerTalk] Odd radial field question

To: Charlie Gallo <Charlie@TheGallos.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Odd radial field question
From: jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 08:06:00 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Charlie Gallo wrote:
> On 5/11/2010 jimlux wrote:
> 
> ...snip....
> 
>> I didn't get the impression from the original poster that he had a roof
>> mounted antenna.
> 
> 
> ...snip...
> 
> Nope, not roof mounted - back edge of the lot, near the corner of the garage 
> is where it would have to go - the ROOF is where the Triband beam is going.  
> The issue is I really don't have much on 40 or 80 - some, but not a lot
> 
> As for cracking - that's what they call expansion joints, and why I said "run 
> jumpers under them"
> 
> BTW - I got Jim's reply, but still have not seen Jeff's original message
> 


If they run mesh through the slab continuously, and you're just talking 
the saw cuts/thin slots, it might crack all the way through, but the 
wire in the mesh bridges the crack.  If you're talking the 1" or so gap 
filled with a squishy filler of some sort, I don't know.  On the one 
hand,  it seems that running a continuous wire would be a good idea, on 
the other hand, since all you really care about is making the concrete 
look like a "good" conductor, it probably doesn't matter much.  You've 
got a lot of surface area on either side of the joint, so the 
capacitance is large, and if the joint is wet, then it's like a resistor 
in the gap, so it's hardly an insulator.

The idea isn't to duplicate a solid metal plate, but to be "better than 
soil"...


Ballpark calculations:
slab 6" thick with a 1/2" gap that's 10 feet long.  Call it 15cmx3 
meters by 1cm gap..
for nothing in the gap
C = A * epsilon0/d

A is 3*.15 or about .45 square meters.  d is 0.01, epsilon0 is 8.85 pf/m

45*8.85 pf = 400pF  (and easily 4 or 5 times that if there's wet 
anything in the gap, because water has a really high epsilon)

I suspect that if there's water around, the resistance of the filler is 
much less than the RF impedance of the capacitor.
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