Topband: Radial connections

[Bill Cromwell]

On Sat, 2012-09-01 at 20:12 -0700, rick darwicki wrote:
> Hi all,
>  
> When I had my house tented I had to disconnect the radials on my inverted L.
>  
> There is a 20 foot pipe that sticks up about 3 feet above the roof and the insulated vertical section is fed there with a big ferrite choke. 
>  
> The radials were connected at the base 3 feet above the roof. 
>  
> There are about 40 and it would look better if I kept the radials flat on the roof and brought them all up the 3 foot section to the ground lug on the vertical mount.
>  
> Any comments one way or the other ?  Tie the all together at the roof and run one wire up or tie them to the 20 foot pipe at the roof ?
> 
> Rick, N6PE


Hi Rick,

My own wild guess would be to use something like copper flashing (wide -
flat) that could be curved around that piece of pipe like a cylinder or
cone. Connect your radials to the bottom end of that and the antenna
ground lug at the top. The new 'extension' does NOT have to be in
contact with the 20 foot pipe mast. My feeling for the radials is they
start spreading the field immediately at the base of the antenna and
that wide strap (as opposed to a wire) would do that for you. For that
matter, Why can't the radials be connected to the pipe three feet below
the antenna and the antenna ground lug connected to the pipe with a much
shorter jumper? Is the pipe plastic?

Did your antenna work well before? If so..why fix something that ain't
broke? Appearance? It's an antenna..not an ornament. Just *my* opinion.

But three feet might not make much difference. Lets see how far my guess
is from what others have to say.

73,

Bill  KU8H