"Larry Gagnon" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 06:41:32 -0500, H. Adam Stevens, NQ5H
wrote:

"Rick Frazier" wrote in message
...
Hello:

I've just received a 5BTV, 5 band trap vertical (75-10M), and as with
most of them, I would suppose the instructions suggest that ground
mounted is ok, but elevated it would be better to use radials.

I am planning on mounting it on the peak, near the center of a rather
large metal roof. The roof is approximately 58x38 feet and has a
pitch
of 4" per foot down from the peak. The roof is composed of 39" strips
of metal roofing, and isn't quite solid metal, but has three sections
three feet wide that use fiberglas panels for the top 35 feet of each
section on each side. (These perform the function of skylights). The
only "bonding" of the roof panels to one another are the stainless
steel
screws that hold the panels to the roof substructure, which are placed
about every two feet along each edge, and in three or four places at
the
top of each strip of metal roofing where they connect to the ridge.
Each run (except for the fiberglas panels) is a single section
approximately 3ft wide and 19+ feet long. There is a connector panel
about 3 feet long at the bottom of each of the fiberglass strips, so
the
bottom edge of the roof is continuous along the 58 foot length.
(Think
of it as a nearly solid roof with three strips missing on each side,
making a 3 foot by 16 foot slot in each of the three skylight locations
on each half of the roof.)

After this description, if you're not completely confused, what I'm
wondering is whether the roof will provide a decent ground plane for
the
vertical antenna, or whether I should add specific ground radials....

Yes, it should, even with the fact that it is not continuous sheet metal
it will probably still have a LOT more surface area than a few radials.
I would ground the vertical well to the roof, test the sheet panels are
electrically connected and go for it. If the antenna doesn't seem to
perform well you can always add radials later. I used a metal roof once
with a vertical and it worked very well indeed.

Larry VE7EA

Considering the GP that is normally used with this antenna for elevated
mounting it should work quite well with what you have. I would probably want
to mount it in the center of the roof and run 4 wires from the antenna to
the corners of the roof bonding the wire to each metal panel it crosses. One
problem with doing this is that bad connections with adjacent panels could
cause noise on recption and intermitent changes in tunning during transmit.
Just be aware of what you may have to do to fix some strange intermittent
problems.