[TowerTalk] Vertical in the swamp

[Jim Lux]

Jack Brindle wrote:
> This depends largely on the QTH. Everglades water tends to be brackish, 
> while water in the Louisiana swamps more fresh. My experience with a 
> HyGain 14AVQ in Miami in the 70s was very good, no matter how many 
> radials (or none). The water table (very brackish) was just three feet 
> down, the QTH two miles from the Atlantic. I saw no difference in signal 
> strength/quality from the northeast or EU whether it had radials or not. 
> On the other hand, moving the exact same antenna to Southwest Louisiana 
> (Lake Charles) made the antenna somewhat useless. The QTH was at 14 ft 
> elevation, and the antenna performed equally poorly whether it had 16 or 
> 60 radials. A long (200 ft) open-wire fed dipole at 30 feet was the big 
> winner there.
> 
> I came to the conclusion that vertical antennas close to the beach with 
> lots of salt water between the station and the "other" guy meant far 
> more than having lots of radials. Of course this was in the 70s and 
> physics may have changed since then... ;-)
> 

I think that's exactly what I was driving at... it's not the 
conductivity as the fact that water makes a great reflector, fresh or 
salt.