Topband: Yet Another Radial Question

[Dennis OConnor]

Bob, you will get tons of opinions..  From my experiments in investigating 160 radials, do not mix elevated and grounded radials...  If one radial is up, keep em all up - or all down as the case may be...
The other point on elevated radials is that the coax should not be grounded either, including back at the radio - and this point is missed by the published authors I have read......  When Christman, and others have done an analysis by NEC engine they 'apparently' have overlooked the fact that their engine assumes an ungrounded antenna is ungrounded everywhere - I have not discussed this with Christman or with Cebik, or others who actually understand the NEC engine <I don't>, so it may be a bad assumption on my part but is a thought I have carried around in my head... 
For my later elevated radial tests I went to a link coupled tuner at one point <which left that antenna/radials isolated from ground> and thought I could see a small difference in favor of the antenna with the tuner versus the one without...  How much of a contribution the extra tuned circuit played in that small difference, I don't know... I didn't carry forward with that in a rigorous comparison test, and it is an item on the project list in my head for the future - if I live long enough to work my way down the list to it...

denny / k8do

 
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