[Antennas] All You Ever Wanted To Know About A Hustler 5-BTV Vertical !

[Dan Richardson]

At 09:38 PM 2/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Dan,
>
>The installation instructions for the 4, 5, and 6-BTV antennas specify fully
>insulated radials.   The best way to accomplish this, is to bury insulated
>wire and seal the outer end.   Liquid insulation works very well.   I've got
>a 6-BTV and installed 4 radials per band.  Each radial is made of insulated
>14 AWG stranded wire.  I chose a bright red wire that will show up well
>against the green grass...  Up here in Maine, frost heave occasionally
>causes shallow-buried radials to creep to the surface during the spring
>thaw.   So far, I've avoided running over the red radials with my ride-on
>lawnmower...
>
>73, Larry - W1GOR

Larry,

It is my understanding that elevated resonate radial systems would indeed 
need to be insulated, but that would require nothing more than not 
permitting the wires to touch anything and placing insulators at the end 
supports of the radial wires. However, a buried radial system is not a 
resonate radial system as a ground-plane antenna, although the radials may 
be at calculated resonate length the effect of ground surrounding the wires 
changes things a lot. Buried radials' purpose is to provide a low 
resistance return path for the loop current and as such antenna operation 
will not have any notable change if the wires are bare or insulated.

However, because of your unique QTH problems covering the wire with a red 
covering seems like a good idea. <g>

very 73
Danny