[TowerTalk] Radials - What is the big deal?

[Carl Smidt]

I agree with Jim's observations and comments. 

The QST article was just trying not to discourage newcomers from experimenting, even a wet string will do at times.

I started out in 1953 with a, so-called, Pogo Stick vertical from an article in either QST or CQ magazine, or maybe 73. 

If I recall correctly, I used a 20 foot piece of 2" x 2", with holes drilled through it every inch and #18 wire snaked through the holes from the bottom to the top.

It was bottom fed through a home-made, tapped, coil and top loaded with a copper toilet bowl float; no radials.

I worked all kinds of stations, Europe and South America on 75 and 40 meters CW and had a ball.

I also fed my Viking II into my bed springs when living with my parents and worked lots of stations on 40M CW. 

I even tapped it on to my mother's clothes line with great results and without burning holes in her sheets (Pi networks are great).

Whatever it takes, one can't be too fussy when starting out in the hobby, particularly when working CW.   BCI and TVI aside  :>)

73,   Carl  VE9OV


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jim Lux 
  To: towertalk at contesting.com 
  Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 3:55 PM
  Subject: [TowerTalk] QST wasRe: Radials - What is the big deal?


  Several folks have written concerning the QST article(s)..  Here's 
  some observations:

  1) QST is intended for general readership and one goal is to 
  encourage folks to get on the air. To that end, their goal would not 
  be well served by article that insisted that nothing is worth doing 
  unless you can implant 120 radials a full wavelength long of the 
  finest oxygen free copper, carefully implanted into precision sliced 
  turf, which is watered by an automated system, and that's only for 
  those pikers that can't afford to copper plate the back 40 of their 
  saltwater marsh with the full sized vertical array for 160m. <yes, I 
  am exaggerating, but you get the idea..>


  2) I think that even QST's editorial board would concede that QST's 
  technical review standards are uneven.  I don't think anyone should 
  be under the impression that it is a "rigorously peer reviewed 
  journal", or, for that matter, that there is extensive technical 
  review, other than for obvious errors. (I can cite specific examples 
  over the past few years of blatantly incorrect and/or unsafe 
  practices, if you like.)  Hey, they have a limited budget, and they 
  essentially have to live what contributors are willing to write.  I 
  suspect that would be counter productive to start coming down too 
  heavily on would-be contributors for technical review:

  a)it would slows down the process (e.g. it takes a year to get 
  published in an IEEE journal, if you're lucky)

  b) it would be frustrating and discouraging to the authors, who are 
  doing the writing out of love, not as their full-time day 
  job.  Nobody will earn a living from writing for QST, even if you 
  wrote every article in every issue.

  I would gripe more if things with technical inaccuracies appeared in 
  QEX, for instance, because the expectations are higher.


  3) Hey, if you're a competitive sort, why not let the unwashed masses 
  believe something they read in QST, when you know better, and can 
  whip the pants off them as a result. Maybe these articles are a 
  carefully laid plot to encourage the competition to do something wrong?

  4) With respect to the change over the years in content (often 
  described as "lots of pictures of appliances, less technical 
  content"):  In these internet days, there's lots of other sources for 
  information, some better, some worse.  The function of a ARRL 
  magazine as a "technical journal of record" is fading away, replaced 
  by books, websites, and so forth.   Partly this is because the level 
  of integration of the components has increased (not many folks 
  building CW keyers with discrete transistors to make the flipflops 
  these days, I suspect), changing the fundamental nature of "radio 
  experimenting and homebrewing". Partly this is because the nature of 
  Amateur Radio itself has changed in the last 30-40 years.

  One doesn't look to back issues of QST for design information so much 
  any more.  This is particularly so for cases where the materials and 
  component technologies have greatly changed.  One wouldn't look at 
  transistor equipment designs from issues of QST in the 1960s or 
  1970s, except as a matter of historical curiosity.  One thing that 
  does get lost, however, is the "design wisdom" that is embodied in 
  some of those articles, particularly if you are restoring old 
  equipment or updating a design. Some years back, someone wrote about 
  "improving" a decades old design for a tube amp HV powersupply that 
  had the probably undesirable side effect of greatly increasing the 
  stored energy, so that a flashover in a tube would destroy the tube. 
  I'm sure the original designer had originally traded off the ripple 
  and stored energy and cost, either explicitly, or by the use of rules 
  of thumb from the era.

  Interestingly, since this is "towertalk", and antennas are the 
  subject, it's an area where people pretty much build antennas the 
  same way as they used to, so designs from older times are still 
  useful. However, the analysis tools and understanding of interactions 
  of the design parameters has greatly increased.  A design that might 
  have been done by rules of thumb and tedious trial and error back in 
  1965 might, in fact, benefit from modern modeling tools and optimizers.

  Jim, W6RMK


  _______________________________________________



  _______________________________________________
  TowerTalk mailing list
  TowerTalk at contesting.com
  http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk