Randy, Also a CA ham, but a bit to the east of you, up here in Folsom. We've got several redwoods and they serve me well for an 88 foot doublet at 45 feet, and two Inverted L's - one for 80 and one for 160. However, I use the K3's diversity receive a LOT and for my other antenna, I have a ground mounted Hustler 5BTV. Our back yard is kinda sucky for antennas - large concrete patio and a fairly large pool. The grassy area is about 40 x 20. The XYL (also a ham - KF6ZNT) "allowed" me to mount the vertical in the grass area. Not in the middle, as we've got two kids, but not too far from it. I installed a DX-engineering vertical radial plate and tilt-over vertical assembly for the 5BTV. Since I'm pretty limited radial-wise, I did the best I could: I ran 40 of them from that radial plate across the entire yard. Not all are straight. Some are 25-30 feet long, some are only 6 feet long. All were put into the grass and held down with metal "clips" - u-shaped things about five inches or so lo ng. Within a year, the grass completely grew over the wires and I no longer see any of them.
For a few months, I used this vertical as my transmit AND receive antenna. Not as good as a yagi at 150 feet, but it works and I made plenty of QSO's!! So, you'll probably do fine with buried radials - the more, the merrier in your case. As a side note - we'd started getting gophers digging through the back yard grass. Apparently they didn't take too kindly to all those steel clips being placed in the grass - after I put in the radials, the gophers moved out! Jim / W6JHB On Monday, Jul 1, 2013, at Monday, 9:30 AM, Randy Cook wrote: > I would appreciate any help from the group on my unusual antenna situation. > Not really Elecraft related, so OK to respond off line. > > Recently, we had to gut our back yard, as several Redwood trees were > undermining a retaining wall. Bad situation. So, the trees had to go, and > with them my antenna supports! I now have essentially a 50ft by 30ft yard > with 6ft fences on the three sides, house and porch on the fourth. Some > hardscape prevents long radials. For aesthetic reasons, I don't have a tower > or tall supports. My first shot was a fiberglass pole, at about 34ft, with a > wire up the middle. Terminates in the base to an MFJ antenna autotuner. I > placed the pole a few feet from the corner of the lot where, when painted, > blends into a neighbors tree behind, and is an barely visible from the > street. > > My limitations are the radial field. I did some research, and started with 8 > wires, varying from 15' to 35' in a 100 degree spread on the flower beds and > small lawn. Another ham suggested elevated radials as an alternative, so I > tried two 35' radials at 90 deg angles along two fence sides, about 4' off > the ground. Much of what I read was from hams with big lots and dozens of > radial in all directions. Couldn't find much on my situation. > > Conditions have not been that good, and other commitments have prevented much > testing. I have some time now and want to find the best solution. Questions > for the group-- > > Give the limits on the radial field (90-110 degrees, limited length) is 10 > buried better than 2 elevated? > > Does it make sense to use BOTH elevated and buried? > > Some prelim testing, using some SE Asia DX stations, showed little difference > in the receive signal strength switching in either or both radial plans. I > plan on using some on air events this week to gather signal strength reports > on my transmissions. > > Any thoughts? > > > 73 > > Randy Cook - K6CRC > K3 #2051 > k6cr...@gmail.com > > > > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
