[Elecraft] K3 & S9 43' Vertical

[Mel Farrer]

Well said Guy,

I have always used two approaches to verticals.  Either FCC equivalent radials 
or above ground radials.  Nothing else works "well".  'Nuf said.

Mel, K6KBE





________________________________
From: Guy Olinger K2AV <olinger at bellsouth.net>
To: Tony Estep <esteptony at gmail.com>
Cc: Elecraft Reflector <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wed, March 23, 2011 9:01:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 & S9 43' Vertical

The thimble summary of effective verticals comes with two major avoidances,

1) the greater possible major loss, don't use a sparse or miscellaneous
ground.
2) the lesser possible major loss, don't run mismatches across coax.
3) don't let the antenna use the coax shield as a radial.
4) don't couple miscellaneous metal in the vicinity.

If you do modeling, please be aware that the pro's know that all modeling
programs on the planet terribly underestimate ground losses.  Dirt is
dastardly devilish to model, the data you need to drive literal computation
is about impossible to gather, and therefore ALL model's ground
specifications are SWAG methods designed to predict ground measured field
strength at the like of commercial stations using FCC specified superdense
(120 times 0.4 wavelength) radial systems.  They WILL NOT predict how
desperately bad your ground system can be.

People who go FCC dense in the ground never have to fool around with these
considerations.  My favorite dense radial system was the row of copper roofs
at Ashmeade Place in Washington DC.  Multiband vertical was gangbusters
there.

You can lose up to 15 db in the dirt with all-too-common throwdown radials.

FIRST, design the best ground you can attempt, take the ugly muddy clothes
route to do it, and DON'T cut corners. FORGET cheep.  FORGET easy. Spend the
money and time on the radials.  Poor radial system is THE MAJOR source of
loss for a vertical.  You can spend big money for a base auto-matcher to
give you a great SWR into a dummy load.

If you CAN'T do radials right, DON'T do grounded verticals.  As simple as
that.

Match it at the base.  REQUIRED when the efficient feed Z is not suitable
for coax.

A friend of mine was overjoyed when his 25' aluminum multiband vertical on
80 meters (brand does not matter here), with the coax connected to the
vertical and the shield to two bare copper wires shoved down into the sod,
came back to him with a 1.1:1 SWR at the end of 80 feet of RG58.  It was of
course the only thing he could measure about his antenna. It was a dummy
load.

The plaintive question later, shouldn't it work if the SWR is good?  Kind of
mean, but I brought over a HeathkitCantenna.  He got the point.  He "didn't
have the time" to put down the radials that I had advised.

An end-fed 130' wire on 80m with a simple matching circuit AT THE BASE of
the wire vaulted him into the land of good signals. Same two wires as
"ground".  2000 ohm antenna in series with a 50 ohm ground is efficient.  A
three ohm antenna in series with a 50 ohm ground is a dummy load.

This one ain't ever gonna be about your fine K3.

73, Guy.

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:26 PM, Tony Estep <esteptony at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Lee Buller <k0wa at swbell.net> wrote:
>
> > ...went to 32 radials. Now, I am working worldwide with the lump of
> > aluminum which cost me $14.00....
>
>
> My clubmate NI0C who appears sometimes on this reflector is on the Honor
> Roll, has 5 band DXCC, and is 2 zones away from 5BWAZ with an antenna like
> yours. Verticals have a bad rep but can deliver the goods if set up right.
>
> Tony KT0NY
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