[Antennas] Radial Wires VS a wire or screen mesh

[K1TTT]

I use 2"x4" mesh fence wire under my raised radials on my 80m 4-square.
When I first did the installation I did measurements as I added radials to
the first vertical and then as I rolled out 150'x4' in a cross pattern under
the vertical.  There was much more change going from 4 to 8 raised radials
than there was in adding the screen, but it did seem to help a bit.  The
wire in that fencing is much heavier than chicken wire and I have gotten 5
or 6 years out of it so far.  I roll it up in the spring so I can cut
grass/weed under it and roll it out again before the fall contests and snow
start flying.


David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: K2RS [mailto:K2RSonline at comcast.net]
> Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 02:21
> Cc: antennas at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Antennas] Radial Wires VS a wire or screen mesh
> 
> 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.
> >
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