Greetings, Can I expect any noticable difference using an insulated wire for radials? Theoretically, the velocity factor of the insulation will make the physical length shorter but is a tuned 1/4 w
Jim, It won't make any measurable difference if you use bare or insulated wire for radials above or below ground. The #18 wire will work well for buried radials, but at the base of the antenna be sur
Jim: When you are burying radials for a vertical antenna, you do not need to tune them. Just make them as long as you can (not to exceed 0.4 wavelengths) and you are done. The 0.4 wavelength number c
The length of radials on the ground doesn't matter except that you need to remember the ground currents are highest nearer to the vertical. Many 50-75 foot radials will be fine, insulated or not. I h
Jim: Insulated wire is more durable than bare in radial applications. The soil pH is kept away from the (presumed) copper wire inside the insulation so the wire will last longer in all soil types tha
I use insulated wire radials which after a few months disappear into the grass....I tack down the wires with large spikes along the way with a single turn of the insulated wire. Yet I have always won
Hi Goose, Think this holds true if you lay down a hundred or more, but is not the case if you install fewer based on more recent research... 30000 feet will be loads of fun to lay hihi 73 & GL in ARR
Herb : I'm not sure you'd ever be able to prove effectiveness one way or another (to ground or not to ground the radials' far ends.) When I installed my radials in 1998, I used large nails to hold th
I guess I have the wrong idea about how the radials of a vertical work. For some reason I thought that they operated as a 'screen' that kept the return currents out of the ground enough so that the "
The trouble with this theory is that it predicts that 1/2 wave verticals with no radials, 1/4 wave verticals with a few elevated radials, and ground plane antennas shouldn't work very well. Actual te
Todd: I use insulated radials for my (now removed) inverted L and shunt-fed tower on 160M simply because insulated wire lasts longer in my back yard than does bare copper. My first antenna at this QT
It seems to me that if radial wires are required to carry the antennas return RF current we might be concerned about the skin depth of the radial conductors. It also seems to me that if we can keep t
Being on a small lot, I faced a problem of having enough radials to make the Battle Creek Special work. My feedpoint is inside the dog fence with 4 #12 insulated radials going outside the dog enclosu
Thanks for the note Bill. As you say, Physics doesn't cut any special deals with anyone. That of course is the good news delivered simultaneously with the bad news. The way to deal with radials is to
power. No, BLE is not still the standard, except maybe at the FCC. Also, Brown's ran out of wire when he reached 113 radials. The FCC later rounded this up to 120. Latter day experts agree that you
As far as I can tell with this and other such reports, including the benchmark 1937 work, all the measurements were made at ground level, and would therefore not measure skywave. The ground level me
There is a study on skywave signals on verticals that is on my web site. I listened to actual received signals off the air and A/B'ed two antennas. In one sense, this is not as precise as you couldn'
I partly agree. There is an aspect of "good enough" on an anecdotal basis. But for circuit components we have completely reliable ohms law and formulas, etc, and for antennas not seriously deprecated