[TowerTalk] One more ground radial question

[Rob Atkinson, K5UJ]

You have all these guys telling you to add more radials which is true--you 
do need more.  Also, more shorter is better than a few long.  But before you 
go crazy or start messing around with ununs and so on, go out and check 
around your feedpoint and attempt to dry the feedpoint off.  Check your coax 
out there and make sure it's dry and has not sucked up water.  You have not 
said how your feedpoint is assembled--whether you have any kind of hardware 
out there, if you have anything soldered or clamped, whether or not you have 
exposed junctions etc.  Dry everything off first and do another check.
Fresh water (rain) does not have anywhere near the conductivity of salt 
water.  It alone on your radial field should not make a drastic difference.  
Some difference yes, but going from low swr to 3:1 is telling me water is in 
your coax or something like that.  I'd check that out first (rule #1: always 
do the easy stuff first.)  I had the rain swr problem too and after a lot of 
head scratching, I went outside and pulled off the coax PL259 and shook the 
water out of it (ah ha), dried it off with a handkerchief and put it back 
on.  SWR was fine.  Then I put the junction inside a plastic sleeve that 
newspapers arrive in.  I have to replace it about once a year.  No probs. 
since, and no messing with coax seal gunk.

I would not try matching with a transformer (unun).  If you need to do some 
tuning, I would get a matching network for your power level, place it in a 
weatherproof enclosure and tune the antenna at the feedpoint manually 
whenever needed.  If that's a hassle because you need to retune a lot, and 
the wx is too crummy get a remote tune unit.  I think SGC makes one.  Don't 
be surprised if you need to do this.   With a lot of radials you narrow your 
swr bandwidth.

Rob Atkinson
K5UJ

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