[Antennas] Putting up a vertical

[Billy Cox]

>Does anybody have experience of waterproofing these conduits 
>to stop ingress of water when buried - or shouldn't I worry?

Make sure the coax is good quality and seal the ends properly.
You'll not be able to keep the line 100% dry ... but it will work.

>Is there any benefit to raising the antenna on a mast rather than ground
>level mounting? If I do, is a system of ground radials better than the
>Butternut Counterpoise system?  Is it even feasible to use a ground
>radials system if the antenna is not ground mounted, ie if the feed
>point is elevated? 

Not really ... not really ... and not really! B-)

>The advice seems to be to put down radials of 30' long. Is there any
>benefit in putting down longer ones and how many should I use?

Radials on/in the ground are no longer resonant., so it really does NOT
matter if they are 30' or 29' or 31' ... the various antenna textbooks have
found that there are tradeoffs as to number of radials verses lengths for
a given amount of total wire. As in if I had to chose between using 60
"short" verses 30 "long" ones ... the 60 "short" ones might be better.

>Looking at Polyphaser, etc these seem rather expensive - does anybody 
>have an alternative?

ICE product offers some similar units ... Polyphaser quality is established
and does offer peace of mind ... I use Polyphaser AND ICE units here
for the various protection needs.

Hope this helps!

73 Billy AA4NU