[TowerTalk] Ground radials/elevated radials

[Peter Sundberg]

Thanks Jim!

Your response tells me that even though radials are spread out under the
vertical they need not be connected to have influence on the pattern. But
surely there must be a substantial difference in performance between having
radials connected to the feeder or floating??  

73/Peter SM2CEW



At 20:40 2004-10-23 , Jim Lux wrote:
>
>>
>> Say you have 50 radials spread out, and for the A/B test you disconnect 40
>> of them connected to a bus wire via a relay, will this be equivalent to
>> just having 10 radials under the vertical?
>
>No, because the radials are still there, and interact with the field.
>Interestingly, one of the validation cases for NEC-3 (which supports buried
>structures) was whether a buried wire could be detected by it's effect on a
>dipole in the air above it.
>
>This is what makes testing so difficult.  Even if you dig up the ground and
>recompact it between test runs, it's unlikely to be that repeatable, unless
>you make dozens of runs, which is somewhat expensive.