In article ,
Richard Clark wrote:

By the way, a Yeasu technician once recommended salting ground rods to
resolve a poor grounding situation at the time, so I've been doing
that ever since (can't hurt), especially during the dry summer months.
Adding water is pretty obvious, so didn't think I needed to spell that
out, Dave.

That sounds like a fantasy. If this thread doesn't grow suitably to
fill in the vacuum of information, you can do a search in google
groups, for this group, using the key word GROUND and CODE.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

It really depends on the area that your trying to build the RF Ground
on, or into. Here in Alaska much of the earth (Dirt) is just plain
Silica Sand, and rock, with very little mineralite in it, and is about
as effective an RF Ground as a piece of Glass. We use Dipoles a lot just
for that reason as they don't required an RF Ground to work against to
radiate effectively. In some areas where Marconi type Antennas are used,
and one MUST have an effective RF Ground, we have used Chicken Wire
panels laid flat out from the base to 1/4 Wave at the lowest Frequency
of intended use, and then Salted the dirt to add to the effective
conductance of the Ground plane untill the chicken wire Rusts to the
point of leaving just the conductive material in the top of the dirt.
The Commercial AutoTune Antenna Tuners really don't work well without an
effective RF Ground to work against, as the Microcode that runs them,
can't deal with the very non-stable RF Grounding Systems. There are a
number of ways to get single-ended Autotuners to tune Balanced Dipole
type Antennas, and those are used as well. Much of the work done in the
commercial MF/HF Communications Antennas Systems here in Alaska, was
pioneered by the Engineering Staffs of the old Northern Radio Company,
and then continued by Stephens Engineering Associates. (SEA) Both
outfits were leaders in Bush Communications here in Alaska, in their day.

--
Bruce in alaska
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