[Elecraft] Is it my KX3/antenna or is it lousy band condx?

[Jim Brown]

On 8/13/2017 9:09 AM, Walter Underwood wrote:
> The 16 foot wire on the ground is a radial “system”. One radial is a lot better than none, but you could use more. The length isn’t especially important

Right.

> because it is capacitively coupled to the ground.

It's also inductively coupled. BUT -- that's NOT how or why radials 
work. AND a connection or coupling to earth does NOT make a transmitting 
antenna work better. That's because the earth is a big resistor, so it 
burns any power fed into it, whether with a direct connection or by 
capacitive or inductive coupling. In other words, it WASTES transmitter 
power.

> Ground resistance swamps any resonance.

Yes, but as noted above, not in a good way. :)   There's a folded dipole 
antenna made with a big resistor in the middle of it, the effect of 
which is to "broadband" it by "swamping" the resonance, AND to burn half 
of the transmitter power. In other words, the transmitter puts power 
into the antenna, but half of it is wasted in that resistor.

73, Jim K9YC