[HCARC] Inverted L

[Gary J - N5BAA]

Trenching – I know about trenching.  The shack is 200+ feet from the house and the “antenna farm” is 150 feet from the shack.  It’s at least 150 feet from the infamous electrical fence controller to the antennas and yes I hear a clunk every couple of seconds or so as the fencer sends another jolt of electricity down the line.  Electric fencing however is an easy fix when using the radio – turn the controller off.  I will be trenching 375 feet from my garage to the sheep barns for electrical.  250 feet from the garage to the water tanks below my house to put in a 1 inch line to transfer rain water (10,500 gallons) from the tanks behind the garage to tanks (15,000 gallons) below the house.  200 feet from the house to the shack for Cat 6 cable for internet.  150 feet from shack to antenna farm.  50 feet from the garage panel to electric fence controller.  Maybe a second trench from the shack to the antenna farm plus some trenches at the antenna farm area.  Yeah, I know all about trenching.  I may not know much about radios, but I know about trenching.  I probably have another 3,000 feet of water lines that are already in the ground.  Heck it’s 350 feet from my well water tank to my house.

Yup, I know about trenching.

73,

Gary J
N5BAA
HCARC Secretary 2013/14

From: SARA SANDSTROM 
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:06 PM
To: Gary and Arlene Johnson 
Cc: H - Reflector 
Subject: Inverted L


Gary,



You still are going to have to do some trenching.  While different sites for the antenna on your land probably won't change the propagation, they will change the background noise level.  I think you want to be as far from your house and as far from power lines as you can get (not to mention your infamous electric fence).  My antenna is about 200 feet from my house and over 300 feet from the nearest power line.  The wiring in your house will radiate just as well as the power lines.  In a former QTH I had a lot of noise from my wife's sewing machine, her Ott light, light dimmers, smoke alarms, televisions, etc.  The smoke alarms were also susceptible to 80 meter signla and would go off when I was on 80 meters.  New TV's seem to be less of a problem.  I've also had problems with computers once in a while.  Now, I hear my neighborselectric fence on 80 and 40 during the daytime when QRN is low.  Its over a quarter mile away and isn't very big, just enough to keep the cattle away from his house.  I think you really want to be at least a couple hundred feet away.



I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to measure the ground conductivity.  I think that matters most to power people and not RF people.  The soil conductivity is unlikely ever to be good enough that a ground rod is an RF ground.  My understanding is that it is the capacitance between the antenna radial system and ground that really determines effectiveness and conductivity is a minor player.  In any event,  I don't think you can do anything but improve your radial system and I'm not sure knowing the local conductivity will help.  If you're doing propagation calculations that require ground parameters, those are tabulated and published.  Note that there is both a conductivity and a permittivity (dielectric constant) that you need. 



Have fun,



Kerry  

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