[TowerTalk] 4 square for 80

[Jim Brown]

On Fri,9/23/2016 11:15 AM, RT Clay wrote:
> In my opinion, if you are height limited, you want to stay away from elevated radials. If you elevate your radials, you are giving up valuable vertical distance which will further lower the feedpoint Z and increase ground losses.

Excellent post, Tor. I'm not so sure that I agree with this paragraph 
though. While elevating radials DOES reduce the effective height of the 
radiator, and thus radiation resistance, elevating radials reduces 
ground losses for the same number of radials. In essence, efficiency is 
the voltage divider ratio between Rr and Rg + Rr, where Rr is the 
radiation resistance and Rg is the ground loss. So it can be a tradeoff, 
depending on what's practical at your QTH and how good your soil is.

Based on my 160M experience (4 radials up about 20 ft on a full size 
vertical), I'd guess that 8 ft is pretty good for 80M. Those 4 radials 
at 6 ft had way too much ground loss. On advice from N6BT, raising them 
to 20 ft helped a lot. The feedpoint for those verticals is about 2-3 ft 
high, and the radials rise quickly as they go away from the feedpoint in 
a "gull wing" configuration.

73, Jim K9YC