[bars] Radials longer than a roof

[Paul Pellegrini]

Radials are an interesting part of a vertical antenna system.  You seem to have a good design that you areshowing.  In reality, you do not need quarterwave radials.  If your radials are notexactly quarter wave your antenna will still work well.  It looks like you will have 8 radials foryour counterpoise and all but 2 of them are resonant.  The only band that doesn’t have resonantradials is 40M.  Just make those whateverlength you can get.  For your situation22 feet.

The great thing about your installation is that you have anelevated radial system.  Those systemswork better than systems with ground mounted radials.
One final thing, just for information.  I have a 10W battery operated POTA station.  The vertical is mounted on a 2 foot tripod.  The counterpoise has 8 ground-mounted radials each 10 feet long.  I can get acceptable resultson all bands from 40 through 10 meters. None of the radials are resonant on any of the bands I use, but thesystem still works with a remarkably low VSWR.
73 de K1VK - Paul

    On Wednesday, June 7, 2023 at 08:51:46 PM EDT, KC1SOZ <kc1soz at bd5.com> wrote:  
 
 Hi Andy,
This is EXACTLY the kind of feedback I was looking for, an alternative way of doing what I was planning. And frankly, what you are suggesting makes perfect sense -- instead of just running the radial through the insulator at the end of the roof and draping the excess down, installing the insulator on the side of the house and running the radial to the insulator. The document you attached is excellent and I am going to read it carefully before proceeding.
In fact, your suggestion has me thinking that perhaps I should install poles away from the structure of the house so I can put the insulators at the top and stretch the radial to maintain its vertical positioning. I would only have to do the two 33ft 40 meter band radials that way as the other radials fit on the roof, and I already have the poles, those green army surplus tent poles Greg is selling. 

Thank you. This is very helpful. :)
73,KC1SOZJuan
On Wed, Jun 7, 2023 at 8:22 PM Andy Wallace <soldersmoke01 at gmail.com> wrote:

In looking things up it appears radials will have macimum voltage at the ends, so I’d make sure you have good insulators there; can you stand them off the house so they don’t move in the breeze?
This may be too much info but you can digest this:

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| elevated-ground-systems-article-final-versionPDF Document · 2.1 MB |

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AndyKA1GTT
On Jun 7, 2023, at 5:48 PM, Juan Jiménez <flybd5 at gmail.com> wrote:

The docs for my antenna says that if radials are longer than the length of the roof from the antenna to the edge, they can be draped over the edge and allowed to hang down.
Two of the radials I will install are 33 ft long but the house is only 45 ft wide and the antenna is right in the middle and at the top of the roof, which means 10.5 ft of the radials will hang from the sides of the house.
My read of this tells me that if I am using insulators, I should bring the radials to the insulator, through the holes and loop to secure, then let the rest of the radial hang down from the side of the roof. 
Is this correct?
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