วีดีโอ

may you explain the difference between your 1:1 transformer vs choke? we all are very snoopy!

dümmliche musik, naja wenn man sonst nichts zu sagen hat....

Wow. Thank you for your testing one variable ar a time. Excellent!

As you pointed out, the isn't a lot of difference between the two... The elevated is a little stronger on transmission, ground radials a little better on receive. While the elevated has less to carry, there is one BIG advantage to the ground radial system.... Chaning bands. The elevated requires an entirely new tuned radial to change bands... Meaning a different length, with a separate attachment point. That is, unless you make a linked radial, staked out at it's farthest position, at which time you always have 16ft worth of line constantly elevated, just waiting for someone to trip into 😂... And that is only if you are limiting yourself to the high bands. 40M and 80M, if you have a loading coil, would require considerably longer, meaning higher elevation to account for sag. Ground radials, on the other hand, you just adjust the whip/coil. As the radials couple to the ground, their exact length isn't much of a factor. Changing bands can be done in a matter of seconds. My portable setup runs 18 3M long radials and I've been able to tune it from 80-6M using my 5.6M telescopic and my Wolf River Coil Mini. I'm sure I lost some gain on the lower bands, but I also didn't have to have a ~20M wire elevated at least 3ft off the ground either. Also, because the radials are short, light, and don't easily tangle (26g silicone insulated wire), they pack fairly small (using a 6" kite string winder) and can be deployed just as quickly, if not faster, than an elevated system, being that nothing is needed to suspend them in the air. That also means placement is easier, as my footprint is less than 6M in diameter *and* can be walked over, this less likely to be walked into by sometime stray pedestrian.... 73

Don't know how I got here but your DIY projects look like mine! You can tell a lot about an engineer by looking at his handy work. +1 sub, I'll definitely watch more off work. Hello from a semiconductor plant in AZ USA 👋 🌵

Great experiment. The music is distracting however.

After watching your video I constructed a 20 meter version of the antenna & counterpoise using wire, and fed with coax. The wire was hung from a tree and counterpoise elevated about 3 feet off the ground in a westerly direction. I have operated from this park quite a few times (US10650) and have had very limited success contacting stations west of the Mississippi River using a variety of antennas. With very challenging conditions this weekend I worked about 20 stations, and half were west of the Mississippi, and even into CA which in recent weeks has not happened for me. So in this test the antenna definitely favored the direction of the counterpoise, and the other contacts were about evenly spaced around the continental US. Even getting 20 contacts was pretty good for conditions lately (I run QRP CW) ... I would definitely suggest others try a raised counterpoise/radials, as even a simple wire construction of the antenna proved to be quite effective. Thanks for the video! Paul NA9M

what is the horizontal axis on the line graphs ? Thought frequency - but don’t quite match the range I expected

not a radial, you made a dipole. An elevated wire is a counterpoise not a radial. This is 100 year old tech, you cant make up your own

Man...I've been around a long time but I have no idea what you are saying. It appears you are comparing your field with your home station somehow and getting huge differences of -12 vs + 12db. Where are you getting these numbers? How are you comparing anything? Maybe it's a language barrier. What is a wein and a Nope LTg? Must be German or something.

I believe the radiation pattern difference is the key to understanding. With the ground radials you have nothing but very low take-off angle while with elevated radial you actually have an L antenna which has both low and high angle radiation providing a more universal pattern. Really, the only situation where a 1/4 wave vertical using ground radials is superior is for local coverage on the AM BC band. Thank you for doing this hard work.

Ham radio Olympics 😄

If any custom PCBs may help for upcoming repair or diy work? We're open to sponsor! (PCBWay zoey)

Could you tell us something about your Dipol? OE3EBK

👍Thanks for doing the test and sharing. Though, I did wonder what the results would be with the same number of ground and elevated radials.

Experimentation is a great feature of ham radio. In this case I think you might find that the one elevated radial signal was helped by the ground radials even though they were not connected to the system. There has been some experimentation that shows that a ground screen formed by radials that are not connected to the antenna system still improve the signal for a vertical with am elevated system. Nice video!

The radials don't radiate far field owing to symmetry. So they're a pure loss into the ground, not storing unradiated energy and offering it again the next cycle. The point of multiple radials is to reduce the current in each, which after I squared losses results in 1/N less radiation into the ground with N radials. Elevated radials avoid loss into the ground instead just by not being near the ground. Hence you need lots of radials on the ground vs much fewer if they're elevated.

Can you post a parts list?

Why one radial? if you add a second one you will cancel/reduce radial radiation and probably get different results. And, it would help if you had a common mode choke on both antennas to eliminate the coaxial cable impact on final results. 73 Danny E73M

Thank you for sharing your test results. Enough samples were taken to make your data and conclusions reliable and conclusive. In addition... the elevated counterpoise will provide a small amount of gain in the direction of the wire. A vertical with a raised counterpoise is essentially a bent vertical dipole. The best results for this type of antenna is with the vertical high enough to drop the radials at a 45 degree to the vertical. It should be kept in mind, that this type of antenna is susceptible to common mode currents on the coax, which in deed will and can affect performance and SWR. So it is recommended that some kind of coax choke be installed at the feed point of the antenna to keep the coax from radiating. In essense, the coax without a choke or 1:1 balun is just another counterpoise whose length can affect tuning. A choke (hopefully) takes the coax out of the equation. Best 73s Dan K1YPB - On the air since 1962

Excellent test, this is how it should be done. Nice base plate for the antenna!

What ratio transformer and for what do you usually use this one? Asymmetrical multiband dipole, end fed random wire? Or in the case that it’s a 1:1, do you have two of the four wires connected together on each side, to effectively have 2 conductors in a bifilar winding pattern (creating a 1:1 balun without any expected impedence transformation)? The number of colored wires is throwing me off :)

Hey Cc. Sorry if I missed it but curious as to which way your radial was pointing relative to the stations you were receiving at? There’s asymmetry from 1 radial, but not huge. Greg from CA (a big POTA guy-forgetting his call rn unfortunately) has a lot of success running 2 elevated radials at 90° from each other to get additional gain between the span of those 2 radials. If they’re 180° from each other it is supposed to tame the asymmetry quite a bit. … overall I think your conclusion is a good one, that the single radial is a nice contender. There are potentially additional benefits from raising the radiator, since you’re able to clear obstacles in the near field better like cars and things. I got a clamp for camera equipment which I attach to the roof rails on my SUV vehicle and screw the whip that way and attach a tuned radial since my sunroof is massive and there isn’t much metal up there. That is of course when I have the car, which is not always. But it can forego the extra support structure, and becomes just as easy as the ground stake. … btw your machining skills look cool. Nice homemade base unit

Really like your real life tests. Well done👍👍

hi love then content i have one too ptefere it to my 705 now ive looked everywhare for the screen protector with no luck could you provide a link for them please Dylan m0dsy

This is some good stuff man, thank you for the videos!

Hi, nice vids! I was wondering if you had any tests with ground on the transceiver and not on the ant. ground element on a balanced dipole coaxal feed? I have done better results with ground on the transceiver but with ground dependent systems, unlike a dipole which does not require a ground. though keep in note that your ground in this vid might of been with a higher flux on the results if you had added a 1.5l bottle of water to the ground at the ground rods. we must take into consideration the actual ground soil levels of conductance (moisture, rain, dryness of soil, etc.) to myself, out of experience the ground looks somewhat arid and poor for good ground conductance in your video. Most importantly, on a balanced system like a dipole ground is not much an issue, but a system using UNUNS like end-fed random wires such as a 9:1 unun or 4:1 system you will see great differences with the ground, unlike with end-fed half waves and 1;1BALUN fed dipole system. the subterrain type of soil, bedrock, etc. where antenna is placed also plays a great factor in antennas in the field , not surprisingly, is never the same value even in the same location during different seasons. lastly, on a non-ground dependent antenna system like a dipole, grounding the braid of the coaxial feed right after the 50Ω exit of the transceiver will result in signal degradation. Your choice of transceiver being a Russian made SDR holds superior technology in reception of signals and its extremely low voltage power requirement for both rx and tx to generate signal and rf is so advanced that its hard to tell with such a superior piece of kit, such kind of tests, unlike let's say a xeigu x-6100 or an ic-705 or even a FT-891(qrp levels) so take that into strong consideration as well. Nevertheless, awaiting your next vids. and results, 73s

One of my favorite backpacking antennas is a upright V Terminated at the radio, no feed line. Worked very well lite wight. I used the radios internal antenna tuner two 42 foot wires

Radio-coax choke-coax-1:1 transformer-dipole. Good experiment, thanks, 73

Add ferrite chokes and try also

Thank you for this information. I do not yet have test equipment so this helps me to narrow my options and focus on the best possible outcomes. 🎉

Banana plug for the win!

Это противоречит концепции трансивера! Зачем тратить столько усилий?

Rule #1. Never overthink a dipole.

AS-2259

Seems like the far field should be better without the ground at the antenna.

Missing infos... The shown values are SNR measured by Js8Call. Blue columns --> received SNR in the field. Red columns --> received SNR from my "data package" at target station. Power about 7W based on what the TX500 showes me.

I think the crazy in your name is well earned. 😅

That’s a great looking protector. I don’t have a tx599, otherwise I’d definitely be interested

Not sure how far you are from your receiving station in Wien and what type of antenna you have there…. But I think you can assume that you would get some type of vertical radiation (along with the dipole’s characteristic horizontal radiation) from the coax in the absence of a choke, and mostly horizontal only from a choked dipole. There are cases where the radiation from the coax could help your SNR, but not with high levels of reliability or predictability. When you’re relying more on ground-wave propagation, you probably would want more vertical polarization. And you’d want both antennas (transmitting and receiving) to be matched in terms of their polarization.

1:1's and chokes really don't help at all.

Pretty kool experiment. My 44 years in ham radio has taught me that just as soon ass your sure of something,You find out your wrong!!

A field strength meter reading would have been a useful gauge as to sig going out ?

I prefer isolation transformers. Nothing will provide the kind of isolation a flux-coupled transformer provides at like 475 kHz ... baluns become ungainly at that frequency, and I use one on a 1/2 sized K9AY loop to keep computer noise from swamping real signals picked up by the antenna.

Bal-Un (BAL)anced-(UN)balanced.

bifilar wound chokes are not easy to make efficient. Rg400 coax wound around toroid makes easy effective choke or "1:1: balun"

Interesting. My guess is it would be even more noticeable on higher frequency.

Why do you have a transformer, when all you need it the choke?

What I wonder should the current choke be at the antenna side or to the radio. As I see it the current choke should be to the radio side. I may be wrong but think about it.

But the losses are so minimal they would hardly be noticeable, if at all to the human ear on the other end