[Antennas] Radial Wires VS a wire or screen mesh

[K2RS]

The contest station with the chicken-wire ground system for its 160 
antennas is always near the top of the multi-multi category in major DX 
contests and manages to rack up lots of Qs on 160 meters. So, while the 
chicken wire might not be optimal, it works in the real world and, in 
the end, that's all that really counts.

Jack   K2RS

Terry Conboy wrote:
> This is probably fine as far as it goes.  The problem is that with only 
> 4 rolls of chicken wire, there is still a lot of soil between the 
> conductive mesh.  The idea of using a large number of wire radials is to 
> provide a path for the RF displacement current back to the base of the 
> antenna that only involves a very short distance for current flowing in 
> the poorly conductive soil until it reaches a good conductor.
>