Topband: Adding chicken wire or mesh on top of radial field

[Yuri Blanarovich]

I think the best vertical installations were done by old radio 
engineers. 
No modeling programs, but tedious solid measurements reflecting reality.


What I saw at WOO - Long Lines AT&T station is perhaps ideal setup for 
vertical all band (discone) antennas.
Radiator sits on concrete base about 3 ft high, with insulator. Tower 
radiator is about 30 ft high, with bundle of wires coming from the top, 
to the ring about 2/3 up, then down back to base.
Not sure if there are any radials/screen at the ground, but the ground 
is practically flooded by the sea water. Sea water comes through dredged 
channels, with evaporation, I presume, increasing the salinity.
Radials are coming out from the base, suspended in the air, over to the 
wooden  circular "fence" (radius about 25 ft?) then they slope and drop 
to the ground.


For better efficiency, it is desirable to make the high current carrying 
portion of the antenna longest possible (electrical closer to 3/8 wave) 
and portion of radials by the base suspended in the air (no earth 
"eating" the RF). If no salt water, looks like the best combination is 
to lay the ground screen in the vicinity of the antenna (gives 
"reflections" for pattern forming) and then suspended or partially 
suspended radials to "counterpoise" the antenna. No need to connect 
screen to radials.
Best 160 inland vertical?  Wally, W8LRL has 3/8 vertical radiator 
sitting on the mound, with 360 radials 3/8 long, laid on the surface.


Looks like WOO Ocean gate QTH is (was) probably the best in the world. I 
never seen the S-meter to sit at 0 on 160m on vertical, dead QUIET!  

Yuri, K3BU.us



On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 08:58 PM, Guy Olinger K2AV wrote:

> Quite late in response, partly done much earlier. Sometimes I have 
> time,
> and sometimes I have a house and a spouse.
>
> Peter's original question in this thread was why a radial and mesh mix 
> in a
> counterpoise should have the radials and mesh bonded together. That is
> quite a different question than why mesh at all, or how good is mesh 
> by
> itself, or mesh versus radials, or just how does "ground" behave at 
> the
> seashore.
>
.......
>
> BL&E DID have VERY sensitive thermocouple field strength and power
> measuring devices with exceptional accuracy. When I was employed by 
> AT&T
> Long Lines in 1963, way back when I still had hair, variants of these 
> were
> still employed for standard maintenance practices. They were 
> significantly
> better than anything I myself have owned since. Just BULKY :>))
>