"Sal M. O'Nella" wrote in
:

This is not your exact situation, I realize, but the latest version of
my radials might be useful: I have several short "pigtail" leads bolted
to one base. Each one is terminated in a banana jack and I have pre-cut
pairs of tuned radials with banana plugs on them. Several sets of my
tuned radials are ready to be unwound from foot-square cardboard frames,
stretched out and plugged into the jacks. The cardboard frames are
simply the lids from cardboard boxes. I notched out a few square inches
at each end to form a flat spool. Tangling is minimal. Presently I can
deploy 8 radials. (Per some discussions I have read, improvements
gained by using more than 8 radials might not be audible.)


This is a nice idea. My current tests are LW AM so I'm only after enough
ground to get a reasonable current through the coil I put on the ferrite rod,
and so far, so good. (And LW radials could be very very long if I ever had to
transmit anything and do it right). I do want to try them for HF too though,
when I get into that, so thanks, this portable method looks like being
useful. I'd imagioned I might need up to 14 radials or so, but certainly all
the guidance I found says 20 or more is diminishing returns.