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Old February 4th 05, 03:55 PM
Reg Edwards
 
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Long, shallow buried radials are by no means a necessity.

Your dry, painted timber flag-pole, with a plastic insulated antenna wire
running down it, can be located alongside a wall of your house or at the
end, side or middle of the garden.

The soil should not be very dry and sandy but should be capable of growing
common-or-garden flowers, shrubs or lawn grass. To improve the soil dig in
compost or horse manure. A light sprinkling of copper sulphate won't do any
harm except perhaps to the plants.

Lay a dozen or a score of 10-gauge or thicker radials, as long as you can
and in as many directions as you can from the base of the pole. They will be
useful even if only 2, 3 or 4 feet long.

Use bare copper wire, at a depth of a few inches in well compacted,
trodden-down soil. Lay paving slabs on top if you like.

For multi-band use you will need an automatic tuner such as an Icom AH-4
located near the base of the pole. If the pole is mounted on a wall of the
house the tuner can be located indoors in the dry.

( My AH-4 is mounted on the inside wall of the kitchen under the kitchen
sink. It is also conveniently near to the main incoming water pipe which
serves as my best of 7 short radials. The earthing loss resistance is only 6
ohms.)

The AH-4 ( no electric motors - a set of relays) easily tunes a 32-feet
unloaded vertical wire down to the 160 meter band. It is primarily intended
for use in vehicles.

You don't HAVE to have an automatic tuner at the base of the antenna. You
can use a home brew L and C matching network on an indoors window ledge by
extending the vertical antenna wire sideways, above ground level, through
the side of a downstairs window frame. The wire is then X feet longer.

There are a number of workable variations on the tune.

If you like amusing yourself with numbers, download in a few seconds program
ENDFEED from website below and run immediately.
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Regards from Reg, G4FGQ
For Free Radio Design Software go to
http://www.btinternet.com/~g4fgq.regp
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