[Antennas] Mesh vs Radials for Ground Plane

[Brian Cake]

    I've been following the conversations on radials with interest.  No one 
has yet discussed getting rid of the radials altogether.  This can be done 
in a very practical way by using the C-pole technique I described in April 
2004 QST.....no it wasn't an April Fool's joke.  Many of these have been 
built and used successfully....see for example 
http://www.qsl.net/hb9mtn/hb9mtn-c-pole.html.

    It is important to remember that the radials only affect the efficiency 
of the antenna.  They influence the near field losses and do not reduce the 
take off angle, which is controlled by the ground quality in the far field. 
The C-pole neatly gets rid of radials by folding a full-size half wave 
dipole in half and feeding it off-center to get to 50 ohms.

    Although I don't have multi-band designs available yet, I am working on 
it....although somewhat sporadically!

    73

    Brian  KF2YN