[TVARC] A stunning 10M antenna

[William De Miranda]

I worked (SSB, phone ) about 20 stations (US, Canada, Brazil and Colombia) dabbling in last weekend’s 10 M contest, with either of the following antennas:
1. An MFJ Remote auto tuner feeding a 1 foot #14 wire, one foot above the grass, or
2. Capacitive coupling to a piece of approx. 7 feet #14 ground wire, attached to my vertical via a switch at the base of my vertical, and a ground wire draping 1 foot above the grass to about 2 ft above the grass, thence attached to a ground rod at the base of the house.
Here is how it happened: 
A couple of month ago I purchased an MFJ 600W remote antenna tuner from a club member, and installed it in a waterproof box underneath my vertical (Eagle One 31’ whip). Because the tuner is connected directly to the antenna above it, I decided I needed a lightning disconnect and grounding switch at the antenna, in a addition to the grounding antenna switch mounted outside the house, about 7 ft away. I purchased a simple SPDT 20A switch and installed it on the tripod at the base of the vertical. The antenna wire  was connected to the center contact, the tuner feed wire to the upper, and the ground wire was connected to the lower contact and routed as described above. I was planning to bury it below ground at a later date.
When starting the 10M transmission responding to CQs of the contest, I could not get a good match with the remote tuner (duh), so I turned it off, and used my trusty Icom AT-500 tuner in the shack, which provided a decent match 😳.
Today, when I went outside to turn the antenna switch to ground because of possible lightning forecast, I was stunned to see, it was still grounded. I forgot to turn it back on after the last batch of bad weather a week or so ago.
So how did my signal get out last weekend?Was the tuner, terminating to a 1 ft piece of wire, one ft above the ground enough???
Or was there a capacitive coupling between the switch contacts (about 1/4 “ spacing) so that an off center fed, 38 ft antenna was formed with the feedpoint 7 ft above ground??
Anyone?
Pim, de K4PIM

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