Topband: Radials Again

[Tom Rauch]

> RE elevated radials needing to be a significant fraction 
> of lambda above ground:  Suggest you read Les Moxon's book 
> "HF Antennas for all locations" for a discussion of 
> this...
> I tend to avoid the battles about elevated radials becasue 
> what I see is mostly religious fervor, not empirical 
> results... I will comment that I was one of the few 
> stations to work Heard Island on 160 from the northern 
> tier of the USA, mid Michigan...  This was done with 8 
> elevated radials, head high, and a leaning vertical...  A 
> later discussion with the ops was that my signal was Q5 in 
> the midst of a general broken buzzing of unreadable calls 
> from other stations...  Just luck, or the elevated 
> radials?

Denny,

Congratulations on that nice DX, but the religious fervor 
comes when people "feel good" without actually having any 
real meaningful or useful data.

Skywave propagation, especially 160, is so fickle and there 
are so many other variables that things like "I worked XX 
under YY conditions" are virtually meaningless. Many antenna 
companies, even some with notoriously poor antennas, use 
empirical results like that to sell antennas. Gotham led the 
way.

http://www.w8ji.com/gotham.htm

There are resistor loaded 25 foot verticals that use similar 
"performance proof".

While there initially was a shortage of data where people 
actually took field strength readings, more and more is 
appearing now. We don't have to rely on our feelings as much 
as we used to. We can find some good science now.

73 Tom