Topband: raised radials

[Charlie Cunningham]

Hi, Tom

Well, I also used a 40m GP with 4 elevated resonant radials about 6' above
ground and I worked an awful  lot of really good DX with it!! I found it to
be about equal to  my half-wave vertical dipole for 40m. (Center fed through
a  home-made 1:1 W2DU style current balun)

Charlie, K4OTV



-----Original Message-----
From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Tom W8JI
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 2:24 PM
To: David Michael Gaytko // WD4KPD; topband at contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: raised radials

> the more i read, it seems raised radials are a fairly easy way to 
> raise the effeciancy of a short vertical.

Only if the original ground system is a meager system with significant loss.

At my QTH on 40 meters, 4 elevated radials at 6 feet above ground were about
equal to 12-15 radials in the earth. That would be like 4 radials 24 feet
above earth on 160.

The difference between them was the elevated radials only worked OK on one
or two bands (like 40 and 15), while the buried wires were reasonably good
on 160-10 meters, out of view, and protected for lightning.

> i have a hy-gain 18ht with base loading.  can i use these raised 
> radials with this antenna, and if so how to do it.  it is impossible 
> to raise the whole antenna to get the base off the ground.

Since the antenna is an all band antenna, I don't think I would use a
resonant radial. I'd just bury as many radials as I could as long and
straight as possible, and enjoy all the bands. If you had 10-20 radials 60
feet or more long, it would be tough to make any improvement on lower bands.

If you use a resonant radial system, it really should be ground isolated. 
That complicates things.

This 10-20 loss thing, at least to me, appears to be based on anecdotal
unconfirmed opinions. Like deer whistles on cars.

73 Tom 

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