Topband: Radials over a stone wall

[Tom W8JI]

> Thanks for the info. This is what I was looking for - info from someone 
> who
> has modeled the radials and/or actual experience with measurements.
> Going over the wall simplifies things for me both for the shunt fed tower
> for topband and for the radials for the 80M 4-sq.
> I plan on soldering the radials together for both antennas wherever they
> crisscross.


I'm pretty sure I posted it, but I know I modeled it out of curiosity 
because I wanted to see how closely EZnec agreed with treating it like a 
simple stub. If you keep the wires far enough apart each new wire divides 
the impedance, so three thin wires over the wall spaced a foot apart are 
quite a bit better than one thick one.

For such a small change added by a short stub, I'd not bother digging, 
boring, blasting, or drilling. You could, if you are exceptionally 
obsessive, run a buss along the wall on each side and run multiple small 
wires over the wall.

Despite what I hear, I have number 16 ground wires on my 300 ft tower that 
were installed in 1998 when I did an elevated radial test here. I started 
checking those wires this summer because of all the repeated lightning hit, 
day after day for a while, that went on.  The original wires held up fine 
after years of direct hits (except where I trenched through them), so I 
don't think even #16 wire would be a wall issue for you.