[TowerTalk] Fwd: length of raised radials

[Hans Hammarquist]

Now, what's in the word "elevated"? What you are saying is that when the radials are close, on or in ground then  "more is better" regardless of length, although it seems like you don't want a radial that has a resonance above your operating frequency. What about the situation if the radials is more than a few feet above ground like a vertical on top of a 80' tower. Is it still valid or do the other method with current sharing and inductor make sense? You don't want unequal current in the radials as that will affect your radiation pattern.

During fieldday operation I put out groundings for the station, one or two typical AC/DC stakes but also a "plate" consisting of a dozen or so about 12' long wires spread out like an umbrella. I make that as I think it can serve as an RF ground. Have no idea if it is effective or not and will, therefor not start any anecdotes about it. I do believe it gives some capacitive connection to ground and if that capacitance is large enough it should reduce RF inside the station.

Hans - N2JFS


-----Original Message-----
From: jimlux <jimlux at earthlink.net>
To: towertalk <towertalk at contesting.com>
Sent: Mon, Dec 26, 2016 6:20 am
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] length of raised radials


On 12/26/16 1:14 AM, Hans Hammarquist via TowerTalk wrote:
> I read an article, many years ago that dealt with how to improve the
> current sharing between the radials. The method was simple: You cut
> all your radials short enough to make them about equal but
> capacitive. Then you add a single inductor to tune out the total
> capacitance of the parallel connected radials.

It's unclear why you'd want "improved current sharing" - in real life
the soil underneath (or surrounding) the radials is hardly uniform
properties. Nor are you typically in a situation where a radial is
seeing a current overload.

As K9YC points out, and shown by N6LF, functionally the radials
basically "improve the conductivity of the soil"


>
> The problem/issue was that when you deal with tuned radials, only a
> small variation in length/tuning frequency will cause a large
> variation in current through the radials. With shortened radials the
> length variation would not cause such as large current difference
> between the radials and thereby improving the systems efficiency.

But with short radials, you are basically in the "physically small
antenna" bucket - you now have a narrow band tuned antenna - The
Chu-Harrington equations say that you can make an efficient antenna
that's arbitrarily small, but the stored energy will go up, which in
real life means more current and voltage, which will increase copper and
other dissipative losses.



>
> What do you think? Shall we go out, cut the ends off the radials and
> then we can use the wire we cut off to :-) make an inductor to tune
> out the "missing" length?

Nope..

I think the basic principle is "more wire is better" because wire, in
what ever form, is a better conductor than dirt (unless, perhaps your
antenna is in the proverbial salt marsh).

The interesting questions come about from "how to arrange the wire",
where you can trade off things like number of wires, length, gauge, etc.
all played against the cost of copper and cost of installation time.

>
>
> Just to clarify -- the primary reason for adding more radials is to
> reduce ground loss. N6LF has shown that 1) the more equally the
> current divides between radials, the lower the total loss will be; 2)
> a greater number of radials tends to improve that division; 3) making
> elevated radials slightly shorter than resonant tends to improve that
> division; and 4) as the number of radials increases, the current
> divides between them, but because power is I squared R, the total
> power lost in the radial system drops in proportion to the number of
> radials used. Rudy also showed that we don't want radials longer than
> a quarter wave but shorter than a half wave, because that range of
> lengths will produce a current maximum on the radial at some distance
> from the feedpoint that is actually greater than the current at the
> base.
>
> An antenna like this can be seen as a simple series circuit, where
> the radiation resistance, Rr, is in series with the wire resistance,
> Rw, and the loss coupled from the earth, Rg. Rr is determined by the
> electrical height of the antenna, and I squared Rr is the radiated
> power, while I squared (Rw + Rg) is the loss. Rr is much lower than
> 50 ohms, so a lossy ground (radial) system will look like a great
> match, while increasing the number of radials will increase the SWR.
>
> I like the suggestion, made by others, to tune the length of radials
> by measuring pairs running in opposite directions (and, per N6LF,
> tuning them a bit high in frequency). Some modeling I did years ago
> in NEC showed that radials buried or laying on the ground typically
> have VF in the range of 0.7 - 0.75, depending on soil, but that VF
> rises quickly as radials are raised, so that by the time you're 3-4
> ft off the ground VF is getting pretty close to 1.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
>
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