[Elecraft] 43' Vertical and the K2 tuner

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Dr. Megacycle has it on the head with the length: 22 feet is 5/8 wave on 10
meters. 

Good "commercial" automatic tuners will feed such an antenna all the way
down below 80 meters. The SGC-230 is commonly used on ships feeding a 23
foot whip all the way down to the emergency SSB frequency at 2182 kHz. 

Many published tests have shown that getting the radials away from the
ground is *very* beneficial and may well outweigh the loss of efficiency in
reducing the height of the vertical. Back in '87, A. M. Christman, KB8I,
published the results of studies he conducted in the Proceedings of the
Third Annual Review of Progress in Applied Computational Electromagnetics
for the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, which he later summarized for hams
in an article in the Aug 1988 issue of QST. That article is available to
ARRL members on their web site. It gives numerous examples of the
improvements to be expected as various counterpoise systems are used above
ground. 

Let me point out to anyone interested enough to read my previous post that I
misspoke. It was kindly brought to my attention by Arnie, PA3A, who observed
I said a half wave radiator has a high radiation resistance when I meant to
say it had a high feed point impedance. My conclusion was correct as to the
benefit of a high feed point impedance, but there's a huge difference
between the resistive value of the feed point impedance and radiation
resistance!

Ron AC7AC