"Reg Edwards" wrote in
:

If you are considering a new vertical antenna, instead of guesswork
and copying somebody else's un-thought-out efforts, download program
RADIAL_3 from website below.

The program assists with choosing an economic length and number of
shallow-buried ground radials. It takes a new look at how radials work
by considering them to be lossy, single-wire transmission lines,
open-circuit at the other end.

RADIAL_3 is a self contained file, 55 kilibytes. Easy to use. No
training needed. Download in a few seconds and run immediately.

Very nice. But one thing I have noticed is that radial effectiveness
begins to fall off at a distance from the antenna very similar to its
height. This seems to be due to capacitive coupling between the top of
the antenna and the radials. Does your algorithm take this effect into
consideration?

I modelled an antenna I used to use and the results did seem consistent
with the behaviour, though. Actually I used to use two of them, and
actually had a gain over a single perfect-ground antenna. Not a LARGE
gain, but still, useful. More useful was the fact that I could control
the take-off angle and pattern to the point where the antenna actually
sounded about 10db louder than a low dipole--at distances of 1000 mi or
more.


--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667