[Elecraft] HF Verticals?

[k6se@juno.com]

Stuart, K5KVH wrote:

"I have not been worried about small improvements less than a dB or 2,
but certainly, some might feel those should be pursued."
==========
Dean Straw (N6BV), who is ARRL's antenna guru, used NEC-4 (which can
model buried radials) to compare the efficiency of various radial
systems.

His modeling showed that for a system of four 1/4-wave radials on 80m in
or over "very poor" ground, about 4.75 dB of the power being applied to
the antenna was dissipated in ground losses.

Increasing to sixty-four 1/2-wave radials reduced the ground loss to
about 1.50 dB.

Over "average" ground, the 4 radials resulted in about 1.75 dB loss, and
64 radials had about 1.0 dB loss.

The moral of this story is that you should pick a site with high soil
conductivity for your vertical (where the number of radials is less
important).

Now we know why maritime mobiles with their salt water ground are so loud
on the low bands.  And it explains why a balloon-supported 160m vertical
over a moist salt lake bed easily outperforms mountain-top 4-square
vertical arrays (which dispells the fallacy that mountaintop QTH's are
better for HF or MF DXing).

73, de Earl, K6SE