[Hallicrafters] Grounding A Vertical Antenna

[Mark Shaum]

Original Message.
>From  Duane Fischer, W8DBF.

> Just lay these on the surface of the ground" What about mowing your
grass?
> Should they not be tacked down or buried?

Duane, I passed the following along to Dave yesterday.  Staking the
wires in place is necessary.

I had such an arrangement in my rented suburban home back yard two
decades ago.  I tacked my radials down by wrapping a turn or two around
a 6 to 10 inch spike every 3 to 5 feet along each radial and pushing the
spike into the ground just below the surface.  After a few weeks of
mowing the wires were essentially invisible.   I used small gauge wire
so that should kids or a lawn mower snag a radial there would be no
injury or damage, other than to the radial wire.  The spikes never
worked their way up, and while I'm sure some radials were broken over
time, the system performed very well, forming the ground plane for a two
element 40 meter phased array.  I had nearly a half mile of radial wire
laid in total!  The local RF field was intense, but luckily did not get
into the cable TV distribution network which was mostly underground.

Mark K9TR