Thanks, Mike!
Yeah, the work you have done over the years with your 4-squares has been
amazing. I have been paying attention. ;)
As you say, nothing we do can change the effect that the ground has on
takeoff angle. That's a far field effect and not a near field one.
What we can do is try our best to keep the near field effects from
having to travel through lossy earth. LOTS of buried radials do that
by changing the local ground conductivity, elevated radials do that by
providing an alternative to the ground, and so will a tuned counterpoise
(the last two being essentially the same thing electrically).
In fact, in reality, buried radials ALSO just provide an alternative to
the lossy earth. We just need more of them for the same effect because
the earth forms a lossy dielectric around the wires.
This stuff gets kind of simple when you think about it long enough.
Take care,
Dave AB7E
On 1/17/2026 10:12 AM, Mike Smith VE9AA wrote:
It was a great video Dave! It mirrors my experiences I have had with many
raised wire verticals with raised radials here in New Brunswick over
poor-medium soil. Most of mine (15M-160M) are fed as 4-squares (160M was a
2-el) with only 2 raised radials, but I have and have had, other solo verts
with up to 5 raised radials each.
I think they all work fairly well, but certainly not as examples of the
best low angle antennas they might had they been located near salt water. I
am not usually beating anyone in pileups, but then I haven’t spent days
installing and lots of money on buying oodles of ground radials or towers
with rotators either.(everything is a trade off if you don’t have very deep
pockets)
I generally tune the vertical wire with an estimated/calculated length (and
2 raised radials) as close as I can get in 1 or 2 sessions, then subsequent
tuning is done playing primarily with the raised radial lengths and perhaps
some slight height above ground and/or angle towards the Earth adjustments.
I do this because the majority of my raised verticals are hung from trees in
a difficult area of a small patch of woods on a slippery sloped hill and
pruning can get complicated, especially since I ‘try’ to get the base of the
vertical as high as possible to avoid deer and moose antlers.
If 2026 allows I’d like to install a raised(?maybe?) 10M 4-square (shaped
like a 4-element VDA) but perhaps on top of a 10.5’ old aluminum mesh
satellite dish. Not sure the effort is worth it. (the Earth still plays the
major role in takeoff angle) but we’ll see.
Thanks a lot for your work on this. I think I see a couple more youtube
videos of yours that deserve watching.
Thanks Mike VE9AA
I mentioned before that I thought we should consider a radial system for a
quarter wave vertical to be just a counterpoise, and it turns out that a bit
of research says that is obvious. That wouldn't be the first time I
stumbled across something I thought was interesting only to find out that it
was common knowledge, but in any case I did some EZNEC models to investigate
that further. This YouTube video describes what I did.
https://youtu.be/teazjobNBFA
I'm pretty crummy at these videos (and they are often best watched at
a higher speed) so be gentle with me, but I'd appreciate any comments
--- pro or con --- on the content.
Take care,
Dave AB7E
Mike - Keswick Ridge, NB, Canada
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