[Lowfer] Experiment with the law of diminishing return

Andy - KU4XR ku4xr at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 19 19:24:50 EDT 2010


Hi fellow lowFERs:

Well my OCD kicked in again today, and after dinner, I experimented
with running some extra ground wires. The first wire I connected
made a 5 Milli Amp increase in RF current. I connected an extension
wire to the end of one of the radials, and ran it about 20 feet over
to the service entrance. I clamped it to the service entrance ground
wire, and immediately saw the 5 Milli Amp increase in RF current.
The second wire didn't give but about maybe 2 extra Milli Amps.
I crawled underneath my mobile home and connected a wire to the 
grounding block on the mobile home frame, and then ran that out to
my radial system. It wasn't a big deal to do, and I considered the
extra 2 Milli Amps worth that effort. The next 2 wires that I ran;
I decided that the effort needed for a final job, would not be
worth the extra 4 to 5 Milli Amps that It looked like I could gain.
I laid 1 wire on the ground, and ran it about 100 feet to a power
pole on the far side of my property, and connected it to the poles
ground wire. I repeated the same effort going to the other side of
my property to another power pole about 100 feet away, and connected
the wire to the ground wire on the pole. this effort gave another
5 Milli Amps of RF current. BUT !! here's the law kicking in;
the first 2 wires gave 5 Milli Amps of increase and were only about
35 feet of wire. The next 2 wires gave an additional 5 Milli Amps
of RF current, but needed 200 feet of wire. In addition to the
200 feet of wire; it would have to be buried !!! and I can't 
justify all that effort to gain the extra 5 Milli Amps.....
So, I disconnected the long wires, rolled them up, and saved them
for another project. Overall; the couple of hours of experimenting
did result in a gain of 7 Milli Amps of RF current on the ammeter,
and I went from 150 up to 157 Milli Amps on peak. Some extra notes;
The transmitter seems to be happier now too... The tuning of the
Variometer is smooth, and when the transmitter keys; the ammeter
" JUMPS " up to its peak whereas before the extra grounding it was 
slow to climb, and kinda sluggish. 
I have a few more ground experiments I plan to try in the days
ahead to see if I can eeek out another few Milli Amps of RF...

73 all, and good lowFER-ing to you:
 

Andy - KU4XR - EM75xr - Friendsville, TN. USA
LOWfer Beacon " XR " @ 185.29875 KHz ( QRSS-60 )
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