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WA2ISE > TECH 16.01.21 23:25l 4 Lines 1290 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 15434_AL0Y
Read: GUEST
Subj: Make feedline to your HF vertical be a part of its radial s
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<DB0ERF<OK0NAG<F3KT<CX2SA<N9PMO<GB7YEW<AL0Y
Sent: 210116/2122Z 15434@AL0Y.#NNJ.NJ.USA.NOAM LinBPQ6.0.21
If you have a HF vertical planted in your backyard, you should have as many radials as you can bury a couple of cm's below the surface. Idea is to keep your RF energy from warming up the dirt, instead reflecting it to the ionosphere. Also, your coax feedline will also be buried in the ground, maybe a little lower than the wire radials. Question comes up, does the coax's outer surface act like another radial? To make that so, I added a few ferrite beads on the coax to stop RF currents on the outside of the coax shield, and placed these about the same distance from the base of the antenna as the other radials are as long. Thus you create an extra radial, and you keep RF from getting back into the shack.
More radials are better, even 1dB is worthwhile, it may make the difference of being decoded at the DX station on FT8. You can use any junk wire you have on hand, insulated or not makes little difference. The only direction to run these wires is straight from the antenna base. You don't need circular loops surrounding the base, as no RF currents would go that way. A ham I know rototilled his yard, then with the dirt loose, quickly buried an inch or so deep 120 or so radial wires. Then he spread grass seed, to grow a new lawn. His antenna works very well.
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