Rudy .. Sevens .. Radials .. Welcome back everybody I'm I'm doing a short video on
radials because I get.. I sell antennas and vertical antennas all right and I think it's
really important that we understand the ground system all right now there's a whole heap of
stuff out there and if I've got to say if you can Discover it there was a man called where is he Dr
George Brown from RCA Labs specified in 1937 that an AM broadcast having broadcast station
should have 120 radials all right now I can't find a paper anywhere you can good luck to you but that
myth has percolated all the way through amateur radio as well so what I can tell you before we
start on this is if you get this completely wrong or you get it completely right the difference is
going to be not more than 3 DB right that's the important thing right radials so let's do a couple
of these uh just look at this graph actually a minute because uh of course I'm only interested in
the line that goes above the dotted the dotted line okay it's number radials it's typical
Improvement in signal strength as quarter wave radials are added to the ground system so we can
do it here we can do so that four radials gave him one all right eight radials gave him 1.6
um 16 radials is 2.2 this is DB 1632 radials is now up to say 2.4 32 2.4 and you can see and at
64. he's not even he's up at 2 4 64. not even 2.5 okay DB gain over a baseline which was just
the coax and I think a ground stake hammered into the ground so what I'm saying is these are quarter
waves all right you get it completely wrong or completely right you start off with four radials
and then you go to 64 quarter wave radials and we'll calculate how much that is the difference
between DB1 and two and a half well it's actually one and a half DB all right way so uh well I could
stop there but I'm not going to right because I've got a bit more detail and data to do so Rudy
so he's got his vertical here and we'll just you know look look down on it all the way down to the
bottom hopefully you can see these numbers here and my microphone wasn't in the way or anything
look down there and he did quarter wavelengths right so four quarters a whole so he did
four radials four radials is one wavelength which means eight radials is two wavelengths
two wavelengths now I very often say well two wavelengths you're probably right not far off
that many Raiders or quarter waves eight what was it so it's 1.6 so you're One DB right according to
his calculations he did a good he's got a good he's got a better name than I have this Rudy
sevens all right he's not just a guy on YouTube he's done good scientific stuff I like his stuff
so 8 or 64 all right so eight eight to sixty four eight six two two wavelengths
or 16 wavelengths of wire right he's got a difference of One DB oh whatever
so but a lot of people can't squeeze quarter wavelengths in now then Rudy did a really cool
experiment he just thought because nobody's done this before what happens if I cut all these in
half all right and add them back in by the way if you've watched a video similar to this before you
don't know you're not you're not going mad okay I just need to do this periodically one because
I end up filming it slightly differently and two I've just got a little bit more data at
the end that I don't normally do and he added these back into the system so he still had
this same amount of copper going on and he just it was imperceptibly diff imperceptibly
well it was almost immeasurable there was a slight loss but we're looking at you know nothing okay so
in other words we don't need causeways we can go down eighth wave all right so on a 40 meter
band a quarter wave would be 10 meters long so you could do that on five meters long all right
okay well what happens I hear you say is that you know the back of my lot whatever else is there my
wife doesn't want a blooming antenna right in the middle she wants it off to the side by that
tree there well what do I do now well it's quite easy you just do them like that a few short ones
there a couple of big ones there but I also hear you say what happens to my signal that way oh you
might be a DB down that's all right just don't don't fret about it if you can get yourself a
couple of wavelengths certainly one wavelength one wavelength here remember okay that one and
um two wavelengths is that one you can be half a DB down whatever if you double it again you'll
be go from 1 to 2.2 1.2 DB you remember that apparently six DB is supposed to be an S meter
uh One S point six DB he probably won't get that but there we are what do I got I've got about I
run about that many okay I think I've got 60 I've got about four wavelengths maybe four and a half
for my lowest frequency because I'm into 80 meters as well so if you think about it if I'm running
that for 80 meters will automatically as soon as I switch my band down to 40 meters but hey I'm
now running this much it just so happens that the radials have got longer whatever marvelous isn't
it so don't fret about putting it in the corner if you can only get 90 degrees or 180 degrees like
that I mean I've done this little plot I've put my antenna there and put all my radials out like this
and by the way when I'm portable even on 80 meters my radials are only 3.5 meters long so that um
we went to the hills I'll put a link I think it was 30 32 30 small radials three and a half
meters long and we did all bands with that and I've crossed Atlantic on three and a half meter
long radials on 80 meters at one and a half that's all right a half half moon shaped and the US was
actually that way all right so that's why I've stopped fretting about radials just get a few down
and if you're worried about how to fix them we do in fact you can buy these I think engulfing shops
and stuff green Stakes do a little pin two inch pin perfect I think we'd sell like 200 in a bag
just push them into the ground and your radials literally I mean I put
mine in last October within two weeks I couldn't find them and the grass wasn't
even growing it just they just disappear by the way I had the dogs playing on them
right at the end a lot of people say oh I've got dogs well don't worry about I've got dogs as well
I'll just pinned them all down they were gone just it's half a day's work all right lay them all down
pin pin pin pin pin buy more than you think there we are radials all right let's not fret about
it all right let's not worry about what doctor whatever his name is George Brown from RCA labs
uh I can't find his paper I don't know what experiments he did but I trust Rudy sevens
all right so don't go down 127. it's ridiculous 16 20 you're absolutely fine well look at the
curve there it is there where's 20. there it is oh yeah half a quarter of a DB if that all
right next video is coming here have a jolly good day see you next time bye for now foreign