I agree that it was an April issue and I think my old friend W8DMR
(Bill) may have written it. However, I was thinking it more in the mid
60's.

de W8CCW

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:51:56 -0700, Roy Lewallen
wrote:

I've used an antenna made of buried radial wires for many years, with a
vertical counterpoise, and AM broadcasters have been using this
technique for the better part of a century. Works fine. Hm, maybe I
should add another column to the wire specification table in EZNEC so
people can specify whether the wire is an (A)ntenna or (C)ounterpoise. . .

A related antenna was described many years ago in one of the amateur
magazines. The author explained that when we construct a vertical
antenna, an image antenna appears in the ground. So he simply dug a hole
in the ground in put his vertical below ground. The image antenna did
the radiating, of course. I did a pretty thorough search of QST and
couldn't find the article -- I'd be indebted to anyone who can recall
where this appeared. My guess is that it was around the early '60s. In
an April issue of course.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL


Reg Edwards wrote:
Some years back I buried a 30 metre (60-feet) auminium wire one spade
depth in my back garden. Wire was 1.5 mm in diameter. Soil
resistivity about 100 ohm-metres. To scientists that's 10
milli-Siemens. The near end of the wire came up in the shack. That's
under my kitchen sink. It's still there. Open-circuit at the far end.

As a counterpoise, something essential to tune it against, I erected a
wire in the form of an inverted-L. This was about 30 feet high and
overall length about 140 feet. I chose this length because it fitted
nicely into my back garden. The front garden is too short even for an
underground antenna.

On the 160m band I fed into it about 30 watts from a home-brew
transceiver so I can't provide for the record a manufacturer's type
and serial number. However I still have the transceiver which can be
inspected.

Despite a high local noise level of S-6 I was able to communicate up
to 60 miles with mobile stations in broad daylight on SSB. After
sunset I could easily communicate with most of Europe on CW.

I think a record of these buried antenna experiments should be kept
for posterity, alongside the famous biblical work of B,L & E.

By the way, as you see, I did remember to measure soil resistivity. It
was the first thing I did. What buried wire do you think I used to
measure it?
----
Reg, G4FGQ