Hi Ron, W4TQT,

Loading coils in surface-laid or buried radials serve no useful purpose
unless the soil has a very high resistivitity as with solid rock and dry
sand.

There are no significant resonant effects which can be tuned out in ground
radials in ordinary soils.

If the soil loss resistance is not low enough in ordinary soils nothing can
be done except to lay down more radials. Increase number of radials rather
than increase length. Make optimum use of copper and aluminium.

Even then, doubling the number of radials might make a noticeable difference
but not a great improvement in overall radiating efficiency.

In summary, forget about coil-loading of ground radials whatever your
favourite band may be.

And forget Marzipan-the-Magician's magic number of 118.5 radials in any sort
of ground. Stop at 32 or thereabouts if you think you may need more than 8
or 16. Or who cares - it may be 6 or 12? But don't forget your best
adial - the domestic incoming cold water pipe.

Check the received signal strength on a standard transmission. If there was
no increase in received signal strength the last time you increased the
number of radials by 50 percent, then stop laying more radials. You are
wasting both time and copper.

Also, in good agricultural or fertile garden soil there's little to be
gained by laying shallow-buried radials longer than 1/10 or 1/12 of the
free-space wavelength.

It's uneconomic to mine copper ore in the outposts of Empire, spend a
fortune in electrolytically refining the stuff, shipping it 1000's of miles,
hot-rolling it into bars, drawing it through progressively smaller graded
diamond dies, and then with back-breaking labor burying it back in the
ground again.

We Hams should profitably pay more responsible consideration to wasteful use
of this small Earth's rapidly diminishing mineral and energy resources,
Earth warming, and waste less time waffling about "power-wave reflections"
on antenna feedlines.

Good luck in the Contest! ;o)
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Reg, G4FGQ