Topband: Radials in the pond..?

[Charlie Cunningham]

I have to agree with Tom. With 60 1/4 wave radials on the ground, you  are
going to have a pretty good ground anyway, and it won't matter much what
you do with a few of them. In my case, the ground rod and the 8 submerged
1/4 wave radials were all the ground that I had. The radials were 14 ga.
stranded bare copper wire.

Have fun!

73.
Charlie, K4OTV

-----Original Message-----
From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Tom W8JI
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 10:29 AM
To: topband at contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: Radials in the pond..?

> I'm putting out 60 1/4 wave radials for my 160m Inverted L on the ground. 
> 4-5 of those radials will end up in my pond with anywhere from 5-10 feet 
> to 25 feet in the pond for those 4-5 radials.  The pond is to the NN/E of 
> the Inverted L.
>
> Should I:
>   1)  Just attach to each radial a heavy enough weigh at the end of those 
> 4-5 radials and toss the weight into the pond?
>   2) Coil up those 4-5 radials and lay the coil wire at the shore line ?
>   3) String those radials along the shore line?

Generally, freshwater is like very poor dirt. As it gets contaminated with 
certain impurities it can become better, but it is nothing even remotely 
like salt water.

With so many radials that long, what you do with the last 30 feet, even on 
half of them, won't matter much. Do whatever is easiest and best physically.

Cut them off, throw them in the water, bend them...it won't matter.

Of course if you want to impress people, run them into the water. Lot's of 
people will think that is awesome and will talk about it. If you tell people

you are doing that on the air, you might even get better signal reports. 
:-)

But in real dull practical life, it really won't matter what you do with 
them.

73 Tom 

_________________
Topband Reflector