>Rob, Not barbed wire, but electric fence wire. This wire stays good for
>decades. Look at the horse and cattle farms around you. It has the same
>conductivity as your galvanized steel tower. Nor does anyone consider
>making a tower out of copper or copper clad steel.☺ A radial system of 60
>1/4 wave of #10 copper cost 50 times what the electric fence wire costs.
Big difference between wire on fence and buried. I've mistakenly
installed galvanized steel ground rods here. Pulling them back out 10
years later they were nothing but rust and useless. The surface area
of a tower's galvanized legs is much greater than the surface area of
a skinny wire, therefore the RF conductivity is NOT the same. copper
has in fact become expensive compared to 15 years ago but all antennas
have gotten expensive. The ground system is 1/2 of an antenna. But,
unlike the directly excited part, you don't have to do the ground
system all at once. You can put it in at affordable segments over
time, assuming you will use it for years to come.
73
Rob
K5UJ
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