Go radial skirt

[nfsus]

With a field strength meter I can watch the reading go up and down based on how I turn the ground plane antenna. The meter is 3ft off the ground 20 ft away. I’m assuming that’s what your call “ground loss”. What happens if I ring the plane radials together with a wire, making a hoop basically? Or if I spun a web of wires between the radials?

Theoretically it should lower the ground loss and improve performance? Or does it just create a cloud burn?

 

[sp5it]

Counterpoise?

 

[The DB]

How big is the change on the field strength meter? How many radials did you use with that antenna? Were they horizontal or angled down?

A field strength meter will be far more sensitive than, say, an s-meter. Used properly, most can pick up on changes that are very small, well below the point that a remote station will even notice exists. Unfortunately, most field strength meters don't measure absolute values, so all you really know is there is a change and in what direction, but not how much of a change.

I don't know that I would jump straight to ground losses being the cause. If you model an antenna with two horizontal radials in free space (where there is no ground) the directions of the two radials will have a small amount of gain over the directions with no radials. So I would assume this is caused by the added directivity that the radials add over ground losses, however, I don't know enough about this antenna setup to say for sure.

When it comes to adding rings to the existing radials or adding more radials, adding more radials tends to be "more effective".


The DB

 

[nomadradio]

20 feet is a lot on 2 meters, plenty of separation.

But 20 feet ain't nearly enough at lower frequencies.

Pretty sure you need to be one wavelength away from the antenna before you can trust this sort of reading.

73