Vertical mounting problem

I agree...go rent a gas powered post hole auger and be done with it. Your back will thank you and you wont have to deal with that sickening "DINK" sound as your shovel tries to bread the frost layer! :wall:

couple hundred feet...for a radials?!?! uhh... you may wanna try a couple THOUSAND feet! In some research I have been doing to un-fuzzle my Zero Five vertical I have come to find out that a couple of resonant radials may work well...if the antenna is elevated and the radials are suspended in air but the losses in ground are phenomenal... I have cut, uhh...2,580' of #14 stranded (equates to 60-43' radials or 5.5 500 foot spools of wire!) and according to some templates and articles... I may be looking at unity gain or possible 1dbi of gain...maybe...if i can get enough raccoons to pee on the ground and up the conductivity constant. Instead of negative numbers with 500' of radials that I currently have (or had). Your mileage may vary or you may live on a salt marsh so dont listen too much to me. Here are some great places to start looking at radials for vertical antennas.

University of Hawai'i ham club. Good read! http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/radials.html

SteppIR pdf on radials. http://www.steppir.com/pdf/radial%20sys ... tennas.pdf

Butternut/Bencher article on radials. http://www.bencher.com/pdfs/00361ZZV.pdf

very interesting article by the late Dr. Sevic (W2FMI) http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/7107016.pdf

Another zero five owners radial experience http://k9jy.com/blog/2008/06/25/zerofiv ... tallation/

NCJ/K3LC article on max gain radials. Read this!! http://www.ncjweb.com/k3lcmaxgainradials.pdf

Will your vert work with a few radials. Of course it will. Will it bust pileups...eh...well...uhh...dunno. But, why not do all that you can to get the most you can out of an antenna. Especially a vertical! Since you got one more than likely for the low angle DX work.

Hope that helps you out a bit. Check out old entries in the bunneh blog for my bucket-o-radials!

On edit...

20 lbs of kingsford eh? I guess if you gotta dig a hole...do what you gotta do eh...and heck you can even sit around and drink beer and roast a wheenie or 3! :cheers:

Luckily the daytime temp's have been in the mid 40's and it was plenty enough to get a 5 foot mast roughly 2 feet into the ground. Removed it and the vertical slipped right into the hole. I got it down to the proper depth and packed the dirt solid so it is actually vertical and not leaning in any direction. I only put down one radial for 80 meters for now, need to pick up some wire at Home Depot so I can put down at least 4-6 radials per band. So far it appears to be working fine, Dad has been testing it out on different bands and can't wait to get the rest of the radials put down.

Yeah 20 pounds of kingsford. There is'nt a well driller or septic tank guy that don't have a ready supply. We get 3 to 6 feet of frost here..