[TowerTalk] Radials vs vertical height

[Dan Zimmerman N3OX]

> That's why many people have good success with the inverted L. If it is made
> longer than a quarter wave length the radiation resistance rises and a good
> ground becomes less important but it seems few recognize that.
>
> I mentioned long ago in this thread that a 1/2 wave vertical needs almost no
> ground to work pretty well and most seemed to want to ignore it and continue
> to bitch about how many radials you need or the antenna won't work.

Yep, my 60 footer kicks butt on 40m.  Probably would with just a
ground rod, too,  You buy an HF2V and you put it over a ground rod and
you're going to have a miserable signal.

You put up a resonant inverted L with ZERO radials, and again, you're
going to have a miserable signal.

It should probably be mentioned that the author of the (really overall
rather good) QST article in question has ***EIGHT*** radials on his
inverted L and seems to live in a region of the country with ***30mS/m
soil conductivity***!!!  As far as I can tell from Low Band DXing,
this probably puts him in the 1-2dBi range.

I still can't get ZERO radial data out of low band DXing but 4 radials
over very poor ground come in around -5.5dBi for a quarter-wave
vert... call it -6dBi for an inverted L... 8dB weaker than the antenna
that worked all that DX described in the article.

I agree that this has gone on too long... one sentence out of a nice
QST article shouldn't spark this much discussion, but it's just doing
new hams a disservice to suggest that zero, one, or two radials is OK.

That's the last I have to say about it... my concern isn't about those
of us who will say "why don't I just use a longer radiator to increase
the radiation resistance and tune out the reactance with this nice
1800pF variable cap I have in my super-well stocked junk box from
which I build all my antennas"

My concern is that hams who are putting up their first vertical have a
fighting chance at having it work *well*  because someone tells them
an actually reasonable minimum for radial installation of verticals
that will be installed with no equipment outside of an SWR meter.

73,
Dan