[160m] Beverage ground rods

[Ford Peterson]

Bob wrote:

> Mike & Ford,
> 
> The typical impedance of a beverage antenna is on the order 500 ohms or 
> more v.s. the 70 ohms or less found in a vertical quarter wave antennas. 
> Therefore the currents in the ground system will be correspondingly less 
> in the case of a beverage. This suggests that a much higher impedance 
> ground can be used successfully in a beverage antenna then for a 
> vertical antenna. Much of the literature on good grounding systems and 
> ground planes is written pursuant to the case of the vertical antenna 
> which may be a substantial over kill for the beverage antenna.
> 
> Bob
> AC7PN

Bob, Mike, and others...

What you say is true.  I wish more people would take the time to describe their soils and actually measure different grounding systems.  Tom has documented his ground and evaluated several different systems--publishing an excellent resource at the same time.  I took the lazy approach and just built a ground, measured it, and realized that it was 'good enough for the girls we go with...'  Many people are resistant to building Topband antennas due to all the hype about grounds.  ANY ground will facilitate radiation.  Perfection is a goal to strive towards.  Inability to achieve perfection should never stop the building.

An on-line compilation of different soils and grounding methods, complete with measurements to-boot, would be an excellent resource for people like Mike in the process of building verticals attached to ground.  People could then evaluate their situation with the findings of others with similar soil structures.

My latest project is going to avoid the issue by elevating the radials.  It's an 80M 1/4wL vertical elevated ~ 9'.  I intend to top load this for 160M as well, using the same elevated technique.  Once complete, I'll document and publish my findings.

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com