[Antennas] Radials

Sat Apr 18 08:32:16 EDT 2015

Thanks, David -
The question really really really was not about safety grounding, it was about the RF return path(ground) for the 160 & 80M antennae as described in the OP.
73, Mike NF4L
> On Apr 18, 2015, at 06:54, David Robbins <k1ttt at arrl.net> wrote:
>> Your electrician is right, don't bother with more radials or added ground
> wires. I would bury the radials you have, but just because I would hate to
> waste the wire, but they aren't going to help significantly for electrical
> safety or lightning protection. Leaving them on the surface definitely
> won't help either case, for electrical safety or lightning protection you
> want radials buried as deep as possible to provide them the most volume to
> dissipate any current they carry. Putting them on the surface is the worst
> case as they lose half the volume to start with since they can't dissipate
> charge into the air and they have poor contact with the soil. If you bury
> them at least a few inches down they at least get better contact with the
> soil but still only have about half the effectiveness they would have buried
> 3-4' down.
>> As far as for an rf ground, surface radials would help efficiency if you
> were going to feed the tower as a vertical, but then you would want many
> more than 3 and near the surface instead of buried. Surface or buried
> radials will not help inverted V's or Yagis.
>> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
> web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net
>> -----Original Message-----
> From: Antennas [mailto:antennas-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mike
> Reublin NF4L
> Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2015 00:04
> To: antennas at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Antennas] Radials
>> I have a 70' tower with an inverted-L for 160M and a 1/4 w sloper for 80M.
> The tower base has 8 yards of concrete and a lot of rebar. There are 3 #4
> copper wires, with one end attached to each tower leg, then into the
> concrete, attached to the rebar then exits the concrete just under ground. 
>> The original plan was to put 3 ground rods along each wire. My electrician
> told me that as far as safety grounding goes, there was no benefit. The
> tower/base megged at 4 ohms.
>> The wires are currently rolled up at the base of the tower. If I straighten
> them out and staple them to the lawn, do they then act as radials? Would it
> be feasible to attach more radials to these where they emerge from the
> concrete, so as to avoid having the top of the concrete pad awash in wire?
>> 73, Mike NF4L
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