The measurement method in the Handbook is seriously flawed. You will
almost always measure something many times better than the soil really
is at radio frequencies.

Since soil conductivity varies widely over small distances, and since
it also has seasonal variations, a rough guess from a book is about as
good as anything.

Myself, I don't worry about it. I just use average soil in models.

73 Tom

Thanks for your comments Tom, and you raise some valid points. Jerry Sevick
"The Short Vertical Antenna and Ground Radial", pp 25, 26, does state that
the procedure is accurate to within 25%, but does not provide any
independant verification of these claims. The method was developed by M. C.
Waltz at Bell Labs, but, again, nothing was ever published.

It would be interesting to develop a more accurate method. While my
measurement of 52 mS/m may not be very realistic it is evident that this
region does have a very high soil conductivity. Ground-wave daylight
reception of AM broadcast stations, with strong signals, at well over 300
miles is possible.

73,

Frank