In a message dated 97-02-15 01:22:51 EST, kb0rol@juno.com (Bradley L
Mugleston) writes:
>
>I have 250 feet of three strand house wire that I am going to cut into
>radials for my vertical. I was going to cut a 20M/10M/5M and a
>5M/10M/20M section out of the first 25M length to give me two 80M 1/4
>radials, 2 40M 1/4 radials and 3 20M 1/4 radials. Can I leave them in
>the original outer wrap so I have a bundle of three radials X 2 or should
>I remove the outer cover and separate the radials. Also are there any
>combinations of radials I should avoid or strive for? The antenna
>covers the 80-40-20-15-10 M bands so I will be cutting other
>combinations.
>
>Thanks and I hope this makes sense.
>
>Brad Mugleston - KB0ROL
Brad and group,
ARRL and other antenna literature suggest you're better off using many
radials, all of equal length, as the spokes in a wheel from the base of your
roof or ground-mounted vertical. You're even better off using all 1/8 wave
(approx) radials on the lowest band,
rather than a few 1/4 radials for each band.
The practice of using 1/2 radials (1/4 wave) per band is something from the
manufacturers. The higher resistance would make the SWR a little prettier in
the advertisements. Better to have 35 ohms and lots of radials than one
radial and 50 ohms ;-)
How many radials? 12, 15, 20 is good, especially when groundmounting.
Use thin, plastic jacketed stranded wire. I've had good luck with #22 wire
radials attached to the roof material and no big insulators on the ends.
73, Jay
W6CJ
[
QRP-L Archive |
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000
]