Topband: Partial Radial System

[Tom Rauch]

> The responses aligned on two major themes: First, there 
> would be a higher
> angle of radiation on the non-radial side;

We never found anything like that in broadcast work.

I recall a station that failed to make pattern and the 
resident engineer decided to cut and remove all the radials 
in the direction that was too strong.

The only thing this did was to very slightly change the 
overall field strength and make the array a little unstable 
with rain soaked or dry soil. The change was in all 
directions. The groundwave never changed significantly in 
the direction that had radials removed. It changed just 
about the same as the FS everywhere.

The real problem was the phase monitor was off, and so was 
the phasing system. The fix was replacing all the radials 
and repairing the phasing system. :-)

I'd like to see where the radials change wave angle on a 
ground mounted vertical! As far as I know the low angle 
signal is affected by things at a pretty good distance, out 
to perhaps 2 WL or more. That's why salt water makes a huge 
difference but a lot of copper does not. You just can't get 
the copper out far enough or have it dense enough at a 
distance. What you do in close changes the efficiency, not 
the wave angle. For amateur purposed I don't think you'll 
ever notice a half radius ground.

73 Tom