Ground Radials: Another Construction Approach?

wdcx · 2007-05-10T19:19:10Z

I was surfing through some vertical antenna site for ham radio and I stumbled on some info that suggested that short vertical antennas (ground mounted) do not need radials 1/4 extending from the base, but rather only needed to be in the far field to be effective. An example might be a 18' Hygain that's ground mounted and used on 40 meters. Convention would suggest slighly longer that 34 feet in several directions. However, several radials about 19 feet will work as well. Now applying that logic, one may conclude that several wires about 10 feet in length should do the job or as long as the antenna is high. So, that being said, I formed a 18" circle using 1/4 inch copper tubing, and soldered 300 ohm twinlead about every inch or so. I twisted and tinned the copper tubing end and then left the far end of the twinlead open, effectivly creating two radials per solder job. So 20 pieces of twinlead is 40 radials. Cheap and easy and it lays flat of the roof with a little help from silicone rubber. The metal ground stakes for camping from Walmart work well if your antenna is mounted on the ground. Just take a paper punch and poke a hole through the center being caeful not to damage the condductor and palnt it in the ground. The copper circle is connected to the transmitter ground. Your situation may vary slightly.

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What is the optimum way of doing ground radials? Should they be thick bare copper wire like Antenna Guy uses (#12 AWG) or would insulated feed line with #20AWG as John suggested be just as good (a very neat idea). Would the the 2 wires in the feedline be better than one #12 bare wire? Also wouldn't feed line be hard to strip the unsulation? It's OK if you have to do the odd one, but to do larger quantities is a pain. With bare wire, you just wrap and solder.

Has anyone had range experience with Antenna Guys ground radial schemes compared to say a single grounding rod? He currently offers these:

qty 10 x 10' long
qty 20 x 10' long
qty 25 x 10' long
qty 40 x 20' long

It would be nice to hear if anyone has any data.

Gerry

Posted : 18/05/2007 11:29 am

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