Thanks for your replies. I should have made clear that I only left the stake
in the ground. There was no radial, nothing else connected to it for those
two weeks.

My soil is pretty good (fertile) soil. It's loamy, dry, and dark. I've never
measured the conductivity of it. It didn't take too much to drive it into
the ground, just a few whacks of my hammer.

Weird!

Al W6LX