[Lowfer] Lowfer wet vs dry conditions

[fccpart15 at charter.net]

Very interesting JD. After I wrote the question and signed off it hit me 
that the "Q" of my antenna system was
really what was changing. Lower Q less current. Higher Q more current. 
Because I am on a slope  and my radials
are all under the mid level concrete little hope for a quick fix. Thanks 
JD.
Lee


On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 9:22 PM, JD wrote:

> To expound upon what William said, it's both a tuning and matching 
> variation, because the antenna capacitance to ground changes with the 
> effective area of the ground "capacitor plate", and the conductivity 
> and dielectric coefficient of the soil vary with moisture content--in 
> different ways for different types of soil--meaning that the soil 
> component of R(loss) increases and decreases.
>
> A more effective ground system is one way to reduce the variation.  I 
> personally favor lots of radials at or just under the surface of the 
> ground. When I added more of those in 2012, I reached a point where 
> the ground loss no longer decreased significantly, but the capacitance 
> swings with soil moisture diminished!  And when the Epsom salt I 
> spread over the ground system worked its way into the soil, that 
> helped further.
>
> Ground rods at the ends of radials may or may not help in a given 
> situation...they don't seem to do a lot for me, but some stations have 
> found them beneficial.  Tying to other grounds (fences, the house 
> electric system) may help, OR they can harm; more often the latter in 
> my experience; but again, testing will be the only way to tell.  These 
> other grounds can fool you--the antenna current may increase, but the 
> radiated signal at a distance (where it counts) may actually decrease.
>
> John ______________________________________________________________
> Lowfer mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/lowfer
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Lowfer at mailman.qth.net
> Post must be less than 50KB total for message plus attachment!
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html