[TowerTalk] 1/4 wave vertical with counterpoise

[Mike Smith VE9AA]

It was a great video Dave!  It mirrors my experiences I have had with many
raised wire verticals with raised radials here in New Brunswick over
poor-medium soil. Most of mine (15M-160M) are fed as 4-squares (160M was a
2-el)  with only 2 raised radials, but I have and have had, other solo verts
with up to 5 raised radials each. 

 I think they all work fairly well, but certainly not as examples of the
best low angle antennas they might had they been located near salt water.  I
am not usually beating anyone in pileups, but then I haven’t spent days
installing and lots of money  on buying oodles of ground radials or towers
with rotators either.(everything is a trade off if you don’t have very deep
pockets)

I generally tune the vertical wire with an estimated/calculated length (and
2 raised radials) as close as I can get in 1 or 2 sessions, then subsequent
tuning is done playing primarily with the raised radial lengths and perhaps
some slight height above ground and/or angle towards the Earth adjustments.
I do this because the majority of my raised verticals are hung from trees in
a difficult area of a small patch of woods on a slippery sloped hill and
pruning can get complicated, especially since I ‘try’ to get the base of the
vertical as high as possible to avoid deer and moose antlers.

If 2026 allows I’d like to install a raised(?maybe?) 10M 4-square (shaped
like a 4-element VDA) but perhaps on top of a 10.5’ old aluminum mesh
satellite dish. Not sure the effort is worth it. (the Earth still plays the
major role in takeoff angle) but we’ll see.

Thanks a lot for your work on this. I think I see a couple more youtube
videos of yours that deserve watching.

Thanks Mike VE9AA



I mentioned before that I thought we should consider a radial system for a
quarter wave vertical to be just a counterpoise, and it turns out that a bit
of research says that is obvious.  That wouldn't be the first time I
stumbled across something I thought was interesting only to find out that it
was common knowledge, but in any case I did some EZNEC models to investigate
that further.  This YouTube video describes what I did.

https://youtu.be/teazjobNBFA

I'm pretty crummy at these videos (and they are often best watched at
a higher speed) so be gentle with me, but I'd appreciate any comments
--- pro or con --- on the content.

Take care,
Dave   AB7E


Mike - Keswick Ridge, NB, Canada