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Dan Richardson · July 11th 06, 01:39 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

On 11 Jul 2006 02:22:15 -0700, wrote:

There are VERY good reasons everyone settled on four radials, and it
isn't the old wive's tale about making the antenna look good. Four
radials is a reasonable compromise between excessive common mode
problems and tolerable common mode feedline current problems, pattern,
and cost.

I don't think that is a "wive's tale".

From George Brown's (one of the co-inventors of the ground-plane)
book "and part of which I was" the following quote about the ground
plane antenna:

".... In our initial experiments we found that only two horizontal
rods (ground rods) functions just as well as four. Many people from
the Broadcast Sales organization came by to view our test and they
always expressed doubts as to the ability to radiate uniformity when
only two ground rods were used. To quiet them, we used four ground
rods for a while, thus stilling the criticism. When the antenna became
really popular, we did not dare confess to our ruse."

Danny, K6MHE