From: "Mike Dennison" <mike.dennison@rsgb.org.uk>
Organization: Radio Society of Great Britain
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 09:28:34 +0100
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Subject: Re: LF: Ground systems
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G3YXM wrote:
> In my experience, as in all amateur installations, you have to experiment to
> get the best result! At home in the city, on good clay soil, earth stakes
> didn't seem to help much but radials did. The greatest help was to bond all
> the incoming service pipes, water, gas and mains earth (all underground)
> together.
> In Scotland the best results were obtained by running as many surface wires
> as I could to wire fences around the area, earth stakes achieved absolutely
> nothing in the poor soil.

My experience is that earth stakes outperformed my insulated and 
buried radial system by a long way. The most successful stake is 
about 10m away from the base of the vertical, slightly lower than it 
(sloping site) and away from the horizontal section of the inverted-
L. A wire to a buried water tank under the horizontal section does 
nothing. I agree with whoever said that it is possible to get a real 
improvement, even if the current does not alter - useful to monitor 
the received signal when adding new radials.

By contrast, when operating portable in south-west Wales at a site 
0.5km from the sea and beside a river, I found that a single 100m 
insulated radial lying on the ground worked much better than any 
earth stakes I could bury. Obviously when portable it is possible to 
get more wire out than at a suburban location.


Mike, G3XDV (IO91VT)
http://www.dennison.demon.co.uk/activity.htm