Jim, 
 
What do you think is the reason why you measure just 340pF on a 55m wire? And 
which C do you measure at 137kHz on the same antenna? What do you think is the 
accuracy of your measurement?
 
300 Ohm earth+surroundings losses is very good compared to my values on the 
hill, although i have just one small tree in a radius of >100m. What about your 
ground conductivity? 
 
Maybe i have to try other additional earth systems on VLF...
 
Will you prepare a TX system on the dreamers band as well? Than we could repeat 
our CW QSO just like on 137kHz ;-)
 
73, Stefan/DK7FC

________________________________

Von: [email protected] im Auftrag von James Moritz
Gesendet: Sa 27.03.2010 13:06
An: [email protected]
Betreff: Re: LF: Question about ground impedance at 8.97 KHZ Stefan.



Dear Paul, LF Group,

For Stefan's benefit, 1' = 0.3048m, so we are talking about a 52m long wire.

I measured my home QTH inv-L antenna (about 55m of wire in total, about 10m
height) at 10kHz to have a capacitance of about 340pF, in series with a
resistance of about 300ohms. This is in a location with several small trees,
etc., so you could possibly expect lower resistance in an open location, or
higher if you are in a forest!

As has been pointed out, it depends on the type of bridge whether you are
measuring a series or parallel RC equivalent - for the above antenna, the
parallel equivalent would be about 340pF/7.3Megohms. The magnitude of the
impedance at 9kHz would be about 52kohms

These are much higher impedances than are commonly measured using amateur RF
bridges. If you look at old textbooks on AC bridge measurements, you will
see elaborate shielding/guarding measures are often required for high
impedance measurements. The basic problem is you are trying to measure a
small resistance component while balancing out a much larger, quadrature,
capacitive component. So anything that affects the balance of the bridge
(e.g. stray coupling between the components, or source or detector), can
cause large errors.  I imagine good electrostatic shielding between the
bridge components and antenna wire would be essential. A first step would be
to check the bridge works accurately on some known impedances (e.g. a
low-loss capacitor of a few 100pF with a series resistor).

The way I did my measurements was to resonate the antenna at the measurement
frequency with a series inductor, then measure the relatively low resistive
impedance of the combination with a simple resistance bridge. The loss
resistance of the coil was measured by replacing the antenna with a
calibrated air-variable capacitor, measuring the resistance again, and
subtracting it from the antenna+coil resistance. This still has some
potential errors (e.g. due to the stray capacitance of the inductor to
ground) but avoids the need to resolve the R/C components, and reflects the
way the antenna will actually be used.

Cheers, Jim Moritz
73 de M0BMU

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