You heard correctly. The ground system lowers losses which
translate
to more power out. This is not method of controlling TOA, simply
loss
- all angles of radiation improve.

======================================

Some buried wires under a horizontal dipole, at a height of 1/4 or 1/2
wavelengths, will, in theory, reduce losses. Some old wife, once upon
a time, must have read something about it in a book without bothering
about the magnitude of the effect.

It's not enough to be detectable. So don't listen to your voices or
waste time digging up your back yard and getting back ache.

There's far too much of old wives reading things in books and
ill-written radio magazines, getting the wrong ideas, and then
plagiarising them. Which innocent people hear about 3rd or 4th hand
or n'th hand.

The fabled SWR meter is another example.
----
Reg.