[Fwd: LF: Ground systems]

[Andre' Kesteloot]

Mike Dennison wrote:

> G3YXM wrote:
> > In my experience, as in all amateur installations, you have to experiment to
> > get the best result! At home in the city, on good clay soil, earth stakes
> > didn't seem to help much but radials did. The greatest help was to bond all
> > the incoming service pipes, water, gas and mains earth (all underground)
> > together.
> > In Scotland the best results were obtained by running as many surface wires
> > as I could to wire fences around the area, earth stakes achieved absolutely
> > nothing in the poor soil.
>
> My experience is that earth stakes outperformed my insulated and
> buried radial system by a long way. The most successful stake is
> about 10m away from the base of the vertical, slightly lower than it
> (sloping site) and away from the horizontal section of the inverted-
> L. A wire to a buried water tank under the horizontal section does
> nothing. I agree with whoever said that it is possible to get a real
> improvement, even if the current does not alter - useful to monitor
> the received signal when adding new radials.
>
> By contrast, when operating portable in south-west Wales at a site
> 0.5km from the sea and beside a river, I found that a single 100m
> insulated radial lying on the ground worked much better than any
> earth stakes I could bury. Obviously when portable it is possible to
> get more wire out than at a suburban location.
>
> Mike, G3XDV (IO91VT)
> http://www.dennison.demon.co.uk/activity.htm