Well,
The concrete pad had to go in, for other reasons. Specifically, that
solar
field saves me thousands of dollars per year in natural gas heating for
the swimming pool.
I would have been a fool not to put that wire in it, while the forms
were
open.
By "work" I mean that the bands sound lively - people hear me and
give me similar reports to what I give them. Can't put it any more
precise than that - and hams are often polite :).
The concrete pad is roughly oriented north-south. It's on the west
side of a hill. It works really well to the southwest - LA, south
pacific, Japan - as one
would expect. It actually works better to the west than I thought it
would - being that the top of the hill is higher than the top of the
antenna... and yes, I do know most of the radiation is from the
high-current part near the bottom.
I suspect that not having radials to the East causes the radiation
pattern to be
higher than it might otherwise be...which might be just what it needs to
hop over that hill.
Still, it might be fun to try laying out some radials and see if it
makes a difference. Maybe with some sort of remote controlled switch to
connect and disconnect them for A-B comparison :).
- Jerry KF6VB
On 2022-01-16 10:41, Jim Brown wrote:
On 1/16/2022 10:21 AM, jerry wrote:
Have you actually tried one? Mine seems to work.
Define "work." N6BT famously said many years ago that everything
"works" by quickly working all continents on a light bulb.
I was ready to put
out radials
also, but doesn't seem to be necessary.
The earth is a big resistor. A connection to it does NOT make a
transmit antenna work better -- indeed, using earth as a return adds a
resistor in series with the antenna that burns TX power, making our
signal weaker! Radials serve as both a counterpoise -- a low
resistance return for antenna current -- AND to shield the antenna's
field from the lossy earth beneath it, also minimizing the loss of TX
power.
There's a conceptual discussion of this in slides for a talk I've done
at Pacificon, Visalia, and to several large clubs.
http://k9yc.com/160MPacificon.pdf
73, Jim K9YC
______________________________________________________________
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
Message delivered to je...@tr2.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
Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
