[Lf] Elevated Ground Plane]

[Andre' Kesteloot]

Richard Brunner wrote:

> Bill wrote:
> "Does anyone use an elevated ground-plane for their lowFER beacon?"
>
> I believe TH has, for many years.  My experience is that an elevated ground
> plane, or counterpoise, is vastly better than any experimenters ground grid.
> When operating as 1RB some years ago, I was heard at 900+ miles in Illinois,
> and would have done much better with a counterpoise.  With the same antenna
> on 160M, on a whim I tried a simple two wire counterpoise, and impedance
> dropped from 85 Ohms to 16.5 Ohms, and antenna current increased from less
> than 1 amp to 2.5.  My ground grid looked more like a 50 Ohm dummy load.  I
> never tried it, but the gain on lf would have been substantial.  Here in New
> England I have poor ground conductivity with rocks, sand, and gravel.  You
> may do better, but remember, a counterpoise is vastly easier to install than
> an effective ground grid.   (You haven't lived 'till you trip on your own
> ground grid.) Counterpoises were also used on the old lf and vlf high power
> stations, and worked as well or better than ground grids.  They eventually
> favored ground grids because there was no maintenance, and the counterpoises
> occasionally started field fires, presumably due to arcing to the
> vegetation.
>
> Richard Brunner, rbrunner at gis.net
>
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