[TowerTalk] Beverage Ground Rod

[lew@teleport.com]

I understand the concept of "the more surface area of a ground
rod contacting the buried ground the better" for RF and electrical
grounding systems...but for the specific case of grounding a Beverage
antenna is that really necessary? 
    I employed the 1 copper atom thick Radio Shack shorty "ground rods" at
each end of each of my 4 Beverages 2 years ago. They all seemed to play
very well and still do. Is there a simple way to tell if a longer ground
rod would enhance the performance of the Beverages, outside of
constructing another Beverage parallel to one I've currently have up?
    If the improvement would be measured in tenths of dB's, then the
effort/performance ratio might not merit the hassle of replacing the short
ground rods.
    I do have the 8 footers at the base of my towers and use the "water in
the hole" method of hand driving them, striking only the occasional 10 ton
boulder cleverly deposited in the soggy soil at Mt. Domitrix.
   Any suggestions to tell if/and by how much the Beverage functioning
could be enhanced by more surface area being used in the Beverage
grounding system?
     73 and I remain,
      Lew

         Lew  Sayre   W7EW/W7AT           lew@teleport.com
         P.O.Box  3110                    Fax 503-391-2258
         Salem, Oregon 97302              160M thru 1296MHz



--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html
Submissions:              towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-towertalk@contesting.com
Search:                   http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm