Topband: coax cable counterpoise

[Bob Kupps]

Hi when I lived in the Mojave desert I fed my 70' crank up tower as a folded monopole on 160m and used 8 radials made from electric 1/4 waves of old coax cable laying on top of the ground. The center conductors of the radials were fed with the shield of the feed line and the radial shields all connected back at the center to the DC tower ground. The far ends of the radials were left open and therefore reflected a direct short back at the center ends. This seemed very effective and I had good results even running 5 watts in contests.

Anyway I now live in northern Thailand and am planning a full size 4 square array built over a flooded rice paddy which is about the opposite to my previous QTH in ground conductivity. I want to farm the land as much as possible however so am considering some type of elevated counterpoise instead of ground radials, possibly using only 1-3 tuned coax radials as a counterpoise for each vertical.

Any thoughts on this approach?

73 Bob HS0ZIA