[TowerTalk] Raised Radial Spacing

[Jim Lux]

If it's a perfect conducting screen and of infinite extent... It doesn't matter. 

If it's a grid of some sort - then it's sort of "soil with increased conductivity" from a "interacting with the fields of the antenna".
Whether you connect it to the station ground? (or with the coax shield?)  That's interesting - if there's a good choke on the coax at the feedpoint, then it's like having a vertical wire sticking up from the screen. 
And we're back to "is it perfectly symmetrical" kinds of things.


On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 13:53:08 -0500, Rob Atkinson <ranchorobbo at gmail.com> wrote:

I don't want to take away from the original topic but this raises an
interesting question: If I have a horizontal antenna such as some
sort of dipole (a REAL dipole and not the thing the Ask Dave guy
thinks is a dipole in QST) and it's over a ground screen, will the
screen work better if it is tied into the station ground, or left
floating? This isn't a trick question. It's something I've wondered
about.

73
Rob
K5UJ

On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 1:35 PM Jim Lux  wrote:

> True enough - Let's say "if I drive a ground stake at the base, and I don't connect my radials to it, the antenna with the radials will still work better than the antenna without"
> (or, if I use my coax shield as the "ground radial that is connected at the antenna feedpoint" :) )