I went to the trouble of measuring my soil conductivity; using the "4 rod
method", with 60 Hz AC, as per the ARRL handbook (Measured 52 mS/m in
Calgary). I believe I have JPEGs of the relevant pages someplace. Also
some guys I was working with, a couple of years ago, devised a method of
measuring the complex permittivity with a capacitor structure. There were
some problems with the method, which they eventually corrected. The


Frank,

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