[Antennas] Radial Wires VS a wire or screen mesh

[K2RS]

I was talking about this topic with a friend last week. He said that one 
of the big-gun contesters here in New England uses rolls of chicken wire 
fencing as the radial system for his 160-meter vertical. Chicken wire is 
available in a number of mesh sizes, but I don't know what particular 
size mesh this contest station is using.

The chicken wire is connected to ground rods at the base of the antenna 
and then rolled out on the ground during contests. When not in use, it's 
rolled up to the base of the vertical. I don't know how long each 
section of chicken wire is, but for 160 each roll is probably over 100 
feet long. I believe there are four rolls arranged equidistant around 
the vertical. The key with something like this, I would think, is making 
sure the chicken wire has a low-resistance connection to more than one 
ground rod at the base of the antenna to insure the efficiency of the 
radial system.

Jack   K2RS


Rick Karlquist wrote:
> I made my own mesh, with a 3 by 3 foot grid of wires.
> I tried driving a 40 meter vertical against it, and discovered
> that this mesh size is too coarse, and I still needed radials.
> I ran them out 25 feet and then tied them into the grid, which
> has a diameter of 230 feet.  This seems to work well.
>