Good.
ON4UN's book led me to make several 160 meter verticals resulting in the last one 77 feet high and 77 feet top section in wire running down to 45 feet above ground.
And a as good as possible ground radial net i could get away with, and the autotuner MFJ 998 at the feedpoint to make it a multiband L.
I can tune it from 160 - 10 without problems, i kept the L longer as a 1/4 wave on 160 to prevent the L being a 1/2 wave and high impedance on 80.
Up to 20 meters good for DX, low angle of radiation and above 20 the pattern rally starts to break up, it will work, but a seperate vertical 35 feet high on the roof for 17-10 works better there.
My OCF ( Fritzel FD-4 with AMA 83 balun for 1500 watts is altered with a coil of 190 Microhenry and 9 meters of wire so it is resonant on 160 as well and works bar a few Warc bands up to and 10 meters.
I made a recieve active loop of aluminium strip 14 feet long in a loop with a long tailed pair BFW 16 A transistors in class A for reception 30 Khz to 50 MHz.
So on each band i can chose for reception the loop a vertical or horizontal polarised antenna and pick the one that gives the best results.
I live on the edge of my city, and have S6 noise on the vertical on 160 the loop is having a better signal to signal/noise reception.
I build and tried EWE antenna's K9AY loops, amplifiers for them, and all mostly made from scrap material.
Building your own stuff, even ladderline, is cheap, gives more satisfaction, and you have no costs changing the stuff.
I'm always looking for copper wire to add to the collection, bought a bunch of roseclips used by the growers of roses that keep a wire 3 inches apart costing peanuts, to make my own ladderline, or make them yourself ( try plastics in the microwave with a glass of water next to it to see if it is not conducting R.F., if it gets hot don't use it.)
My plot of land including the house is just 100 x 25 feet large, see piccies at qrz looking me up there.
My radials are all over the place some 40 feet long a few 100 yards long in my plot, the neigbours etc.
I can run 1000 watts here without having neighbours here coming to my door with pitchforks demanding me to stop ;)
I connected the house ground to my station as well the elaborate groundstake system of 17 x 10 feet long copper pipes.
Even the stainless kitchen sink is connected to that... as well waterpipes, gas pipes ( all copper here) and zinc gutters.
Near the foot of the vertical use chicken wire to cover as much and dense the ground, here the largest currents run to the feedpoint, connect the ground wires to that and run them to the feedpoint, use silver solder to connect them not the normal solder, it wlll corrode into dust in 1 or 2 years.
Cadwelding is the best option, clamping on a ground plate from stainless steel works too.
Check your system every year, using my MFJ 269 antenna analyser i noted down the data and check each year if nothing changed signaling a problem.
Just a few grabs of my experiences here for the last 36 year hamming...
And have fun ;)
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