[TowerTalk] vertical antenna question

[Rik van Riel]

On 01/20/2011 06:42 PM, K2VI wrote:
> I finally put the antenna up. Set up the radial plate and ran 85' of davis bury flex to the shack. The swr on 80 meters is 6.0:1 and on 40 meters it is 2.4:1. Making a contact on 80 1300 miles away my dipole fed with ladder line 50' inverted vee did 1.5-2 S units stronger than the vertical. Now if a had a full compiment of 60 radials would this bring up the signal with that distant contact? Just want to make sure the radials will help also help the SWR on 80. With my tuner i can easily tune down to 1:1.1. thanks for any help.

Your antenna impedance right now will be a sum of the
wire resistance (small, lets ignore it), the radiation
resistance (Rr) and the ground resistance (Rg).

R = Rr + Rg

Your radials will "short out" the ground resistance,
which should result in the antenna resistance becoming
smaller.

This could either raise or lower your SWR, depending
on where the antenna impedance is now.  It could even
lower the SWR on one band while raising it on the other.

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