Hi Martin,
Glad to hear that you are getting there slowly.
You will probably get the best advice re earthing from some of the others,
but I have a couple of tips to pass on.
The antenna wire does not need to be as thick as you are proposing, 1mm
would do. Most important is height (proportional to square of). Next is
amount of top loading wire covering new ground. Laurie has some good ideas
here. I have his conclusions archived if you haven't seen them.
Earthing: Copper water pipes will bend over if you try to hammer them in. I
attached a garden hose and slowly eased them down by twisting and gently
pushing with the water flowing. If you are patient they will even go through
hard chalk as here. It doesn't matter that the ground is dry in summer, just
lay as much wire as possible and connect it to 4 or 5 earth rods. I have 10
radials each 10 metres long. There is a lot of info about earth mats in the
LF handbook. Some lowfers attach it to the house earthing as well, but be
careful of PME mains earthing. See the RSGB handbook's advice re PME and
take it to heart. You could lose your house or worse be electrocuted. Also
probably not a good idea to extend your earth below the neighbours garden.
Hope to hear you on the band soon. Should be strong here!
73 John, G4CNN
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