>Some pretty sharp engineers disagree with this advice. Rob Sherwood, NC0B,
>first published on the usefulness of galvanized ground screen in 1977, and
>talked about it in >presentations in the Dayton Antenna Forum in 2008 and
>2009. Rob is best known for his work on quantifying the receive performance of
>modern HF rigs. Like anything making >contact with the chemical makeup of soil
>and local moisture at any given QTH, materials that work in one location may
>not work in another.
You can go to all the trouble of putting down "mesh" and risk having
to do it all over again since that is a material and product not
intended to be in contact with the ground.
Or you can spend the money and do it right from the get-go, except
that in professional installations, copper mesh or screen, is only
used with voltage fed towers. For most ham situations the tower base
is a current maximum, i.e. a 90 degree radiator base fed, and for that
a radial ring and ground system made up of radiators is fine.
Who are all these "sharp engineers?" Kevin Kidd of AM Ground Systems
Inc. has probably done more professional AM tower ground system
installations and re-builds across the U.S. then all of your "sharp
engineers" combined.
There's nothing wrong with being a cheap ham at the hamfest, but the
ground system is one area where cheap just buys trouble within a year
or even a few months.
73
Rob
K5UJ
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