Antennas with and without radials

My first antenna was an end fed wire with a galvanized pipe for the ground rod.

My DX-60 had a pi network and was able to match the wire directly on some bands.

Soon after I built an L network tuner to match it on all bands. I wound a coil about 2 or 2 1/2 inch diameter and about 6 or 8 inches long. I used an old cigar box as the chassis. The coil was on top of the box and I mounted a 140 pf capacitor inside the box. I had a short piece of coax from the transmitter to the cigar box. Eventually I got a Heathkit SWR meter to make the adjustment easier. 

This first wire was about 50 to 70 feet long. It probably worked simply plugged into the DX-60 on 80 meters because it was a quarter wave long. 

Later I tried dipoles, but could not get very high. I then lengthened the end fed wire to around 300 feet. It went from about 15 feet on my house to about 20 feet high (on a pole) 45 feet from the house then 250 feet to the top of a pine tree. 

This antenna started with two galvanized pipes as the ground and later I connected a wire to a copper pipe at the outdoor water faucet. I did not notice any difference. This antenna with a substandard ground ( no radials) performed great. I worked a lot of DX on 160 meters, including KH6IJ on 160 meter SSB at 5AM one morning! 

Later I put up a 70 foot tower with an extension out the top to a height of 108 feet for use as a 160 meter vertical. I used a gamma match to match the tower to RG-8 coax. The only ground was an 8 foot copper rod at the base of the tower. Of course the tower was just a few feet from salt water and was on salty soil. At least once a year the salt water would cover the ground around the tower.  I think that had something to do with it working so well without radials.

I did very well in the 160 meter contests. Although I did not work him in the 160 contest I later heard that EP2BQ heard me in the contest and I never heard him calling me!

On more than one occasion I had a tower/ additional masts out the top making it anywhere from 90 to 100 feet of vertical for 160 meters and never with a single radial. This was between 1970 and 1990. 

I did compare the 300 foot end fed long wire running NE/SW to my Mosley Triband Beam at 70 feet and on 10 meters the wire was always better to the NE and SW.  In any other direction the 3 elements of the Mosley was much better if properly pointed. 

This demonstrated the gain of the wire was almost directly off the end when it was about 8 wavelengths long. Again no radials only galvanized pipe in the ground in the early years.

In the past 20 years, since 2001, I have used mostly fan dipoles for 40 through 10 meters for both DX-ing and contesting. On 80 I have had great success with a slightly bent 80 meter half square. At one location it was broadside to Europe only. Contest results were very good and I always beat out dipoles and inverted V antennas at 80 feet and higher. At another location I put it up broadside to the Pacific and Japan. In the only contest with that configuration I did very well in the Pacific and Japan but very few European contacts. I then “rotated” the Half-square until it was broadside on Europe and the next few contests from that location working Europe was easy but Japan was again hard. 80 meter dipoles never worked very good for me in contests because 60 to 70 feet is low on 80 meters, so I always ended up with a half square. Even though the half square was essentially two phased quarter wave verticals it did not need any ground system. I also had moderate success with an inverted L on 80 meters. Better than a dipole but never as good as with the Half Square.

On 160 meters, since 2001, I have used a 165 to 180 foot inverted L with usually 2 radials. Sometimes none (2014-2017) and occasionally three (2013-2014).

I worked over 700 QSOs in 160 meter contests with no radials in 2014 and 2017. I worked over 800 with I think three radials but it may have been two in 2013. I definitely worked 874 QSOs with only two radials in 2012. At my current QTH, I have a ground rod at the base of my 160 meter inverted L and always one, sometimes two radials. Good enough for 450 to 600 plus QSOs in most 160 contests since 2019 without many hours of effort. I do also hold 160 meter DXCC. So the antennas with a minimal ground system do work  and pretty good at that.

On 40 meters I tend to get best results with a dipole. The inverted L is never better. I tried a 40 meter Half square and except directly broadside, the dipole was always better. Broadside to the half square was only maybe equal to the dipole for a lot more wire and effort. I took the 40 meter half square down and kept the dipole.

My 39 foot high 20 meter dipole always did much better than any end fed wire or half square. I also compared a 20 meter half square to a low 20 meter dipole, about 20 or 25 feet. The dipole also was always better than the half square. I concluded that the half-square was a great 80 meter antenna, not as good but close to a dipole on 40 meters and significantly down from almost any dipole on 20 meters.

The ground or radial system make up half of the antenna in antenna systems where they are necessary. A simple ground rod should in most cases be significantly less effective than having radials. I am not sure you can always tell much difference. The quality of the ground out in front of the vertical, about which you can do absolutely nothing to fix, is a major factor in vertical performance. Reducing ground loses at the base of the vertical is within the things you can do. We do that with a “good ground”. Whatever that means. Sometimes things are so good that a ground rod by itself works really good. Sometimes only a few radials seem to be enough. Sometimes we don’t know when to stop. In any case it’s always a case of diminishing returns. I have taken measurements at the base of many inverted L antennas. I have added radials one at a time and gotten a feel for how much I was reducing the loss resistance. I also always use a longer than quarter wave inverted L to increase the input real resistance to 50 or more ohms if possible. This increases the efficiency. With the quarter wave inverted L the power is split between a real R (radiation resistance) of 35 ohms and another real R ( loss resistance). If, for example, on a quarter wave vertical or inverted L the loss resistance was 15 ohms we would have a 1:1 SWR with 70% radiated and 30% power lost. With the higher radiation resistance of 50 ohms and the same loss resistance of 15 ohms we get 76.9% radiated and 23% power lost. 

If we only improve the loss by say 5 ohms, and end up with 10 ohms of loss and radiation R of 50 we have 83.3 % radiated and only 16.6% power loss.

Back to the quarter wave inverted L with R radiation of 35, with a loss resistance of 10 ohms we have a 22.2% power loss.

We would need to reduce the total loss to 7 ohms to get the same efficiency with a quarter wave inverted L (or any vertical) with a radiation resistance of 35 as we do with a 50 ohm radiation resistance and a 10 ohm loss resistance. Making the antenna a little longer is easy and returns are predictable but adding radials is not so predictable or easy. The first one or two are usually noticeable. After that things get fuzzy. I went with an easy improvement in efficiency by making the inverted L about 3/8 wave long and another significant improvement with two radials. It worked good enough that the expense, effort and time to add more radials was not worth it to me. Maybe I am just lucky and all my locations have been extremely good. I seriously doubt that anything I could have done with additional radials would have given me an additional 3 dB.