Great comments guys, lot's of good information here. To the guy who commented about "kilowatt". I didn't get that you were talking about phonetics. Ignore my reply. I realize there are a few people out there that adhere precisely to the official phonetics. I mostly do. But I'm not going to get all worked up about someone deviating slightly, or more, from them. As long as the intended letter is communicated via a recognized word, the job has been done and communication succeeded. Isn't that what really matters after all?
I am an NCS for Maritime Mobile Service Net. We ask folks to use the IARU phonetics. Ships and general check ins ALWAYS give me goofy phonetics. But when the Coast Guard (and recently the USAF and Canadian Forces) come onto 14.300, the folks always go back to standard. It's proper, respectful, and easy to do when an authoritarian 20 something yr old military voice comes on air 😎
I always try proper ones first then try with something different for hopefully an increase in clarity and if you get mad about this can I suggest some MDMA and a lie down in a nice comfy nest?
Interesting Kevin. Soon after I first got licensed in the early to mid 1980's, my HF beam antenna was down for repairs. So for giggles, I threw a pile of wire out the shack window onto the ground outside. It was raining at the time and so I didn't extend the wire along the ground - I just left it in a heap below the window. I got on 20 meters with an ATU and to my surprise heard the band full of west coast stations on the long path from my location in South Africa. I put out a call to a station in California using 100 watts, and he immediately came back with a 58. That is the power of being near the top of the sunspot cycle - Africa to California with 100 watts, and a heap of wire lying on the ground as an antenna 😂
I have had amazing results with loop on ground antennas for RX 160M-20M, KK5JY has a great write up on how they work. A conventional antenna simply placed on the ground will perform very poorly as demonstrated. But a Loop-On-Ground Receiving antenna will have low take off angle, low noise, a bidirectional pattern, with 2 LOG's (1 with a delay line) you can get ~20 dB front to back in my experience! And at only 15' x 15' the loops only need 60 ft of wire, even for 160M! A very long time ago most hams used separate gear for Tx and Rx so it was not such a big deal to use two separate antennas, but since the integrated tranceiver became the universal standard the idea of dedicated Rx and Tx antennas has lost popularity. A high Q mag loop for Tx, and a broad band LOG would give you a very capable setup, with easy deployment. 73. AD0WQ
On ground is OK for receiving but as a transmitting antenna you’d just be warming some dirt. I’m currently using a random length wire and counterpoise as a receive antenna. It’s temporary but OK for AM DXing. I’ll be building the LOG and probably adding a preamp at the antenna. Glad you tried it out and showed how you did it. Thanks.
When evaluating a receiving antenna signal to noise ratio is more important than signal strength. Simply comparing S meter readings was not really a fair test.
In the late 70s I listened to shortwave radio while underwater in the Philppine Sea. Would hook up to the floating antenna and listen to dramas from Australia northern service. Great reception
I operated portable with a wire on the ground on 2 SOTA summits: Whiteface in NY and Mt Mansfield in VT, because there were no trees. I laid my end fed wire on the mossy rocky ground both places....and I made many qso's. I was surprised but very happy. Scott kw4jm
Hi Kevin, I can answer about ELF, I use it everyday to locate buried utility lines with. We use an 8Khz sine wave at 1-3 watts and can get a few miles out of it. Switching to 33Khz drops the signal drastically for distance. Ground soil conditions has tons to do with being able to locate the lines. When you get a chance look at Clam Lake, Wisconsin and the antennas used to communicate with submarines, very intresting.
I have seen the charts that have been made in the past for the depth of penetration in earth and into sea water versus frequency and baud rate, and the deeper the lower the frequency and lower the data date for the signal to get through. There are not many of those high power ELF transmitters left. Many have been closed down and the land sold, along with air bases and other military property in various areas. It leads one to wonder where the future good engineers and operators will come from, as people can take classes on most anything, but that does not teach them much in the practical applications, only theory and very little hands on and experimenting. Once someone knows things well they can work with most anything, but those trained on just one piece of equipment do not do well when things change. I have seen this time and time again, as I can easily fix and redesign things even without any schematics that others who have no experience in the designing and building of the same equipment are lost with simple repairs. I know that many today rely on simulation software, but that only works when one has a computer on hand, and does not help when the computer does not work or something unexpected is observed. As with most things they just put in a fudge factor and push on not knowing fully what they are doing or knowing what to fully expect. It takes experimenting and experience with many things to find out the differences between ideal and the real world. As the real world is more complex than any of the equations that one will learn even at a Masters or Doctorate level. It is this experimental experience that people get with listening and designing equipment, and being a Ham that is the only way to understand how the future will work and how to make it happen, as for it's existence in the first place. Also in the 1930's and so forth it was operators that built their own equipment, and I got my interest in electronics from Electronics World, Radio Electronics, Popular Electronics, ARRL radio books from the 40's and later. Just have avoided even considering becoming a ham because I'm so bad at learning code. Easier for me to figure out how to design and build a box to listen and translate than listen and write it down, and that is because of my learning disabilities that make communications difficult for me since a very young child. Things hard for most are easy to me, and things that are easy to me are difficult for many others.
You have proven that messing with tennas (ahem, performing antenna engineering experiments) is still fun!! Especially in beautiful locations. Thanks for video de Tim KB2RMC
Great vid. One comment. If you notice, at the 6 min mark in your vid it shows the noise level on your scope with both the in air antenna and the on ground ant. The on ground antenna has much less noise compared to the in air antenna. For transmitting, the in air antenna is almost always be better, but as a receive antenna, the on ground antenna can help dig those signals that are buried in the noise out. Sig strength will be less, but sig to noise level will be better. This is the idea behind the beverage on ground (BOG) antenna. Sometimes having both and a switch between the two helps with pulling out those weak stations. Thanks.
Guess what I just took my 36 foot vertical wire antenna down and threw the wire on the ground ready to pack it away because of the wind . it also has a 6 foot copper ground rod .. I decided to test it out for the he'll of It before watching your video . wow ZERO interference on the empty bands unlike the vertical and picking up serbia and Moscow from the UK booming signal ...i can garentee it does actually work you just have to be lucky with the placement of the wire as I was earlyer on .
ground mounted antennas are usually aimed at obtaining a lower signal strength to noise ratio--the signal strength drop off is usually less than the noise drop off, making reception much better--if one tries to transmit thru a ground mounted antenna, usually the effort comes to grief-- i have a 28 foot diameter loop that many times is my best antenna for reception on 160m and even occasionally on 80m--unfortunately i can't get that loop directly on the ground at my present location--if i could, i suspect my S/N ratio might improve even more---but i wouldn't dream of trying to transmit thru it--
I use a groundwire antenna that is under my grass in SW Ohio, for nighttime listening to hams (cw, ssb) while I drift off to sleep. No worries about lightning since it's in the ground and only a 28 gauge enameled wire which won't carry much current. I get ham activity coast to coast with no problem. The grasswire works great for me!
Yep, but one thing. You're not immune to lightning. Any nearby strike of a building or tree will generate a huge electrical pulse in the wire, even on the ground.
I live in an HOA, so experimentaton is imperative. I have a temporary 40 meter dipole set up in the yard. It is about 2.5 feet off the ground, definitely below 3 feet. The legs on the dipole are 30.1 feet per side, that is what it took to get an SWR of 1.2 or better on the general frequency range of 7.178 to 7.300 MHz. The antenna has been working great, didn't think it would get past Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, & Nevada, but it has, and not bad, LOL. I am in NE Utah and have had QSOs all the way to the east coast, signals of 2/1 to 4/4 , which is way better than the total ZERO I expected. Given the actual band conditions (not the good fair poor ratings found on the daily Solar Terrestial Data forecast) this antenna has done pretty good. I go on the OMISS 40 meter net in the evenings, and this is where I have been testing it. This is a temporary setup, I hope to put it up to 35 feet later this week, waiting on a friend to bring the ladder we need to get up on the roof. I have been using this setup for the past 4 weeks and I am impressed with its performance. I would love to see what it will do on a day where the actual band conditions are good, but I am more anxious to get the antenna up and working under normal operating conditions. Given the HOA thing, I am happy that it works where it is now, not optimum, but it works, it is an alternative should the roof mount become an issue. My elevation here is circa 6900 feet. The soil is conducive to plant growth, flowers, berries, apples, & vegetables, the soil retains moisture, but by 1 PM it is dry, and I set the sprinklers to go off at that time so the Kentucky Blue Grass stays green. When we dig here, it is mostly large rocks going down, the 8 FT copper ground rod became an angled one, no way to it drive straight down here. We are in the Rocky Mountains, LOL! WW7GBA Louis
If you used a more insulated (from the ground) cord, I'm wondering if it would perform better. Like maybe a long extension cord. (It would have a thicker rubber sheath. Or, it could just be that the horizontal polarization is cutting down your signal.
Hello Kevin. I'm in the process of making the LoG (loop on the ground) antenna. It is two 15'x15' square loops in phase to produce a sharper bidirectional pattern. This is a receive antenna only. Each loop will have a 6.25:1 transformer at the feed point and fed with 75 ohm coax. I'll be able to compare the snr with my 80m full wave horizontal delta loop and 3/4 wave inverted L which are 50' off the ground. I'll let you know the results. 73 Scott - kl4nu
I have QSOd on ground antennas. The wire must be at least one wavelength long and radiates off the end of the wire. The longer the wire, the lower the take off angle. Ground antennas are lossy but are also directional. If you need a stealth antenna this is a good compromise solution. Check out K3MT's "grasswire" experiments in Bermuda.
I spend my winters camping outside of Yuma on reservation listening with PL660 & picked you up on 80 meters, you had to be close, although I do get 20, 40 & 80 meter bands both day & night.
I messed around with a 'grasswire' antenna, and came much to the same conclusion you did here in Michigan. I recently ordered an interesting noise canceling kit which uses a 'noise antenna' for picking up RF interference to inject 180 degrees out of phase into your receive signal. I wonder how a ground wire would work for that purpose. 73 de w8tam
BOGs (Beverage On the Ground) are a real thing. Actual sensitivity isn't important, because you're looking for low noise and directivity, and make up for the lack of sensitivity with a preamp, and it's a receive only system.
Wether or not an antenna will work lying on the ground will depend on the ground. I have used a special Harris antenna designed for desert and that works fine as long as you operate in a desert as I did in Afghanistan. The same antenna does not work back home. Not even close. But funny enough it springs to life again when put on top of deep snow. We typically get 4-5 meters of snow during winter. To many think of ground as the ground we stand on, but antennas doesn't always agree. Normally it will be correct, but try operating in desert where water is way down in the ground (water surface or water table, I don't know what you call it in english) and the ground it self isn't very conductive. One of the reasons we discovered something was of in Afghanistan was that low hanging dipoles didn't give us NVIS. Not until we placed a wire as a reflector on the ground below the dipole. After a while we got hold of this specially designed Harris antenna which gave both decent comms, but also some covert antenna site.
Kevin...in this video when you were tuned to 3.923.5 that was me calling the net. The rig I usually use it my IC-7300 driving a Heathkit SB-220 running about 800 watts output to a 160 meter doublet. I was surprised how strong my sig was with your antenna laying on the ground. I have done the same experiment you have done with a G5RV and found the same as you did....it worked but not anywhere as good as when it is strung up in the trees. 73 WB7S
What was the length of the end fed antenna on the ground? What was the difference in signal to noise ratios between the end fed on ground vs the vertical, especially as you came down in frequency? Did you put an RF choke at the receive end of the antenna (a loop might need one at the antenna feed point as well to keep it from being grounded)? What is the ground conductivity rating at the test site (higher is better for lower angled reception)? Did you try the wire as a loop on the ground with a 9:1 balun (loops don't need a ground or counterpoise)? Did you exceed 1/2 wavelength of the end fed on ground in your tests (loops can handle up to one wavelength before reception pattern goes bonkers)? Did you know that you may have just been warming up the earthworms trying to transmit into the ground (a loop can make a useful Receive-only antenna if one has space restrictions)? Did you have a preamp turned on which may have just amplified the ambient noise? Did you see this web page ( kk5jy.net/LoG/ )? Did you see these experiments ( forums.radioreference.com/threads/160-20m-log-loop-on-ground.370110/ )? Or this experiment with 40 feet of looped wire, amplified ( th-cam.com/video/2YhK0Mvd58w/w-d-xo.html )?
One time I was doing some repairs to my antenna system and had to lay my beam on the actual roof, I live in an apartment so its hard for me to drop all the antennas, and I was amazed that i was still working DX even tho the antenna was pointing approx 40 degs into the sky due to the slope of my roof :D. I know not technically on the ground but it was flat on my roof...
Another thought is you used anlong wire. I ran an 80m dipole laying on the ground last year for summer field day and made 20 contacts in 30 minutes. But, like you said, mine was but one test. KK4BK
I laid wires from my Alpha antenna 9:1 balum 60 ft on bushes from the vertical lug and radials on the ground. I was using an Icom 7100 with ldg tuner. Using Winlink Express and ARDOP. I was able to connect to a station 300 + miles away on 80 m. I could not get my wires up in the trees. Gave up and remember some thing Bonnie said about laying her dipole on Bushes. ( HF Pack).
Hi ... Did you measure the naked (no tuner) SWR?.... Have played with these critters a bit. Ussaly see the length shrink 20 to 30%. Your right...it all depends on what kind a ground you lay it on... And as best I could tell... it turns a other wise good antenna into a cloud warmer.... signal strenrh will be down 20 dB...(suggest a switchable attenuator)... noise even more... but how would you be able to tell ...with no noise... to be found in radio paridise!!!... Tnx for a great video...73
I've seen that before. Raised 1 to 3 feet off the ground so the ground acts like a reflector. It's an NVIS antenna for near vertical radiation and a local area of coverage. 100mi or so.
Hi Kevin, Think I watched some of those videos you mentioned. I might have tried an on ground receiving antenna the BOG, but had my doubts about it's effectiveness for transmitting. Appears you answered that question. Did you participate in the CQ 160m SSB contest this weekend? 73 WB3BJU
Maybe you could compare the light bulb to the ground antenna. ;-) We used to employ a 40W appliance light bulb as a dummy load when tuning up some tube transmitters. I think,not always but generally, getting the wire off of the ground is better. Good video. 73.
The problems I see on the ground is that it is high capacitance to the ground, even though the ground is dry. That being said it will change the effective length of the very least, and that is not accounting for the amount of signal that is absorbed by the ground. There is only one practical use that I could see and that is spacing at a set distance from the ground and tuning for EME or other such communications where the intent is to eliminate one or more signals at the same frequency that are from the horizontal direction. Also when close to the ground I would probably look at that as more of a waveguide than antenna as it would be tuned with the ground as part of the propagation. Also if buried in the ground it would mostly pickup changes in the magnetic field of the earth, power lines and other such very very low frequencies. I know this from experimenting as a kid, before I understood that an antenna is a tuned circuit unto itself.
Kevin, head West from Quartzite to Orange County, California and camp at Bolsa Chica State Beach above Huntington Beach. You can test your ground antenna theory on the marsh and mud flats adjacent. A lot of roving hams campy here and work scads of DX with conventional antennas. Be a good experiment. Sorry you missed Yuma. It was a gas!
Interesting investigation / experiment. Got me thinking, suppose you had a resonant dipole antena, and for some reason you could only get half of it in the air. The other half of the dipole you laid straight out, but on the ground. Therefore, the dipole is in a straight line, but one half in the air, the other on the ground. Would it work??
I sent Jerry WB7S the link so he can hear himself from your location. He is in Basin WY. The WY cowboy net is there Monday-Friday at 5:30pm till the net is done. OJ
You Kevin: Another GREAT video! I agree with your assessment, but there are some expeienced voices here as well, with the loop antennas standing out. Worthy of more experimentation & another video, (which I suggest : ) Have a great time out in the Southwest, check out some of the gunslinger sites & report on them. You might find some ham interaction! 73's, de seeker/Jeff WA7LFP
Without seeing but a few minutes of the experiment I guessed the dry ground would provide the "differential" between a ground rod driven into the ground and the antenna. So did you have a grounding rod or just the counter pose?
There are many free for 2 weeks BLM areas out here. Then there's long-term visitor areas where I'm at, which charged $40 for 2 weeks. But you get access to a dump station, dumpsters, and freshwater.
oh forgot to mention so would it basically work as an NVIS antenna being on the ground???? I know there is a BOG antenna Beverage On Ground.////// would it help if the ground antenna were longer for receive???
Uhmmm....what am I not seeing? Why would you use a 9:1 unun driving the dipole? Is the reactive component of the ground level dipole so large that a 9:1 is justified?
Well, your assumption has merit...windstorm here in S. Michigan over last 24hrs took down my 40M dipole...it is laying on ground and deck...no receive now...sigh...spring cannot come soon enough! 73 OM
A raspberry Pi computer, connected to a Yaesu FT-817 through my DuinoVOX scratch built USB rig interface. (yes, I did a video on it, search for Duinovox)
Now this is an interesting question. With these conclusions demonstrated, it sure would be interesting to compare the performance of a vertical with ground radials vs a vertical with above ground radials. Thanks for the video Kevin.
That would most likely work well provided that there is little metal or anything else conductive such as wet roofing near the antenna. You will probably need to adjust for the capacitive effects of the roofing material with an antenna tuner to get a really good signal. Nails are not an issue, just how close the antenna is to the flashing that is used. The farther from the flashing the better, as it will look almost exactly as an open air antenna at the same height. I used to run an antenna under the eve of the roof in a house and it worked great, and I could get signals from nearly all countries in the world in the SW and from 160 to 20 meters. Unlicensed and even though I had a transmitter with an 807 in the final at the time, never thought of putting it on the air.
O also ran into ham That was a civilian contractor down here in Florida Tampa Mac dill and they buried antennas and they work fine. The tone I wasn't playing with deck. A could say much about it because it was classified, LMAO using 1000 watts
The closest you can get to running it in the opposite direction from the radiator, the better the performance. A 90 degree angle would be the limit before you start to fold it back on the radiator and lose performance.
Sure. I once may a contact using the backstop fence at a baseball diamond. Anything metal can radiate RF, but not very efficiently unless it's a half a wavelength in dimension.
I only got one question for you this is Katie zero uef Chuck and I didn't catch it did you actually sell your house to move into your RV or do you still have your house and you're just out rving I was curious but you know what they said curiosity is what killed the cat so 73
Help. I have a 40m delta loop. I can hear many stations but no one hears me. I've tried my IC-7300 and KX3 but not one response. This is over several days of trying. Any ideas? JJK
@@johnkershaw9575 Seems odd noone can hear you. Just checkin'... You're using lower side band on 40m? Is there a balun on your deltaloop? I'm in Michigan, and happy to tune a frequency if you want to give it a try.
@@johnkershaw9575 There's something gone wrong then. Generally speaking, SWR shouldn't change under power. Above 3, unless you have the 7300 in emergency mode, it won't tune it.
ANY antenna will work. An incandescent light bulb will work for an antenna. All antennas will work better than another antenna. A dipole at 20 feet will work better than one on the ground. One at 70 feet will work better than one at 20 feet. A beam at 40 feet will work better than a dipole. A beam at 80 feet will work better than one at 40 feet, etc, etc, etc.
A buried antenna will have its resonance at about 25-30% of the length of an antenna up in the air due to dielectric effects. The feed impedance will be higher as well. Your antenna was not properly matched. The military has used on ground and buried antennas for years, one application was for backup comms to missile silos. See the text "Antennas in Matter: Fundamentals, Theory and Applications by Owens and Smith" and www.rfcafe.com/references/short-wave-craft/images/buried-antenna-performance-development-small-resonant-buried-antennas-ad-783-274.pdf I use a ground dipole on 472kHz, about 480 feet long ( in free space it would be nearly 2000' long), it has an impedance of about 200 ohms. 73 Warren K2ORS
Thank your very much for this ACTUAL real testing. Those of us who do think about these things rarely have the ability to go out and do so. I've been interested in 1K submarine communications for years, but to no avail. Lotsa land need just for listening I guess, maybe Area 51??? Water listening from NO-WATER regions??? Than just seems GOVERNMENTS to me. Thanx.
Several questions....So are you basically homeless now living in a camper? LOL we should call you the Nomad Ham. also I would not think it would be very quiet as all those campers all have 12 volt systems with some solar and all those PWM inverters in the campers causing hash......???? I guess its less than in town in a house with all the crap we have plugged in these days?
Great comments guys, lot's of good information here.
To the guy who commented about "kilowatt". I didn't get that you were talking about phonetics. Ignore my reply. I realize there are a few people out there that adhere precisely to the official phonetics. I mostly do. But I'm not going to get all worked up about someone deviating slightly, or more, from them. As long as the intended letter is communicated via a recognized word, the job has been done and communication succeeded. Isn't that what really matters after all?
I am an NCS for Maritime Mobile Service Net. We ask folks to use the IARU phonetics. Ships and general check ins ALWAYS give me goofy phonetics. But when the Coast Guard (and recently the USAF and Canadian Forces) come onto 14.300, the folks always go back to standard. It's proper, respectful, and easy to do when an authoritarian 20 something yr old military voice comes on air 😎
Delta alpha mike nancy sierra tango romeo alpha india tango!
I always try proper ones first then try with something different for hopefully an increase in clarity and if you get mad about this can I suggest some MDMA and a lie down in a nice comfy nest?
Some people have problems saying certain words, especially if english isn't your native lanquage.
Is "Kilowatt" supposed to be decoded as KW or K? It's a tad ambiguous. Why not just "Kilo"?
Interesting Kevin. Soon after I first got licensed in the early to mid 1980's, my HF beam antenna was down for repairs. So for giggles, I threw a pile of wire out the shack window onto the ground outside. It was raining at the time and so I didn't extend the wire along the ground - I just left it in a heap below the window. I got on 20 meters with an ATU and to my surprise heard the band full of west coast stations on the long path from my location in South Africa. I put out a call to a station in California using 100 watts, and he immediately came back with a 58. That is the power of being near the top of the sunspot cycle - Africa to California with 100 watts, and a heap of wire lying on the ground as an antenna 😂
I have had amazing results with loop on ground antennas for RX 160M-20M, KK5JY has a great write up on how they work. A conventional antenna simply placed on the ground will perform very poorly as demonstrated. But a Loop-On-Ground Receiving antenna will have low take off angle, low noise, a bidirectional pattern, with 2 LOG's (1 with a delay line) you can get ~20 dB front to back in my experience! And at only 15' x 15' the loops only need 60 ft of wire, even for 160M! A very long time ago most hams used separate gear for Tx and Rx so it was not such a big deal to use two separate antennas, but since the integrated tranceiver became the universal standard the idea of dedicated Rx and Tx antennas has lost popularity. A high Q mag loop for Tx, and a broad band LOG would give you a very capable setup, with easy deployment.
73. AD0WQ
On ground is OK for receiving but as a transmitting antenna you’d just be warming some dirt. I’m currently using a random length wire and counterpoise as a receive antenna. It’s temporary but OK for AM DXing. I’ll be building the LOG and probably adding a preamp at the antenna. Glad you tried it out and showed how you did it. Thanks.
When evaluating a receiving antenna signal to noise ratio is more important than signal strength. Simply comparing S meter readings was not really a fair test.
They used to do this up north in the Yukon and the NWT with the mining groups some 40 years ago on 2.6Mhz and 4.2Mhz.
In the late 70s I listened to shortwave radio while underwater in the Philppine Sea. Would hook up to the floating antenna and listen to dramas from Australia northern service. Great reception
I operated portable with a wire on the ground on 2 SOTA summits: Whiteface in NY and Mt Mansfield in VT, because there were no trees. I laid my end fed wire on the mossy rocky ground both places....and I made many qso's. I was surprised but very happy. Scott kw4jm
Hi Kevin, I can answer about ELF, I use it everyday to locate buried utility lines with. We use an 8Khz sine wave at 1-3 watts and can get a few miles out of it. Switching to 33Khz drops the signal drastically for distance. Ground soil conditions has tons to do with being able to locate the lines. When you get a chance look at Clam Lake, Wisconsin and the antennas used to communicate with submarines, very intresting.
I have seen the charts that have been made in the past for the depth of penetration in earth and into sea water versus frequency and baud rate, and the deeper the lower the frequency and lower the data date for the signal to get through. There are not many of those high power ELF transmitters left. Many have been closed down and the land sold, along with air bases and other military property in various areas. It leads one to wonder where the future good engineers and operators will come from, as people can take classes on most anything, but that does not teach them much in the practical applications, only theory and very little hands on and experimenting. Once someone knows things well they can work with most anything, but those trained on just one piece of equipment do not do well when things change. I have seen this time and time again, as I can easily fix and redesign things even without any schematics that others who have no experience in the designing and building of the same equipment are lost with simple repairs. I know that many today rely on simulation software, but that only works when one has a computer on hand, and does not help when the computer does not work or something unexpected is observed. As with most things they just put in a fudge factor and push on not knowing fully what they are doing or knowing what to fully expect. It takes experimenting and experience with many things to find out the differences between ideal and the real world. As the real world is more complex than any of the equations that one will learn even at a Masters or Doctorate level.
It is this experimental experience that people get with listening and designing equipment, and being a Ham that is the only way to understand how the future will work and how to make it happen, as for it's existence in the first place. Also in the 1930's and so forth it was operators that built their own equipment, and I got my interest in electronics from Electronics World, Radio Electronics, Popular Electronics, ARRL radio books from the 40's and later. Just have avoided even considering becoming a ham because I'm so bad at learning code. Easier for me to figure out how to design and build a box to listen and translate than listen and write it down, and that is because of my learning disabilities that make communications difficult for me since a very young child. Things hard for most are easy to me, and things that are easy to me are difficult for many others.
Paul you likely already know this, but there is no longer any code requirements to get your license. In case that is all that is holding you up!
@@Paul-gz5dp "Once one knows things well they can work with almost anything." 👍👍
You have proven that messing with tennas (ahem, performing antenna engineering experiments) is still fun!! Especially in beautiful locations. Thanks for video de Tim KB2RMC
Great vid. One comment. If you notice, at the 6 min mark in your vid it shows the noise level on your scope with both the in air antenna and the on ground ant. The on ground antenna has much less noise compared to the in air antenna. For transmitting, the in air antenna is almost always be better, but as a receive antenna, the on ground antenna can help dig those signals that are buried in the noise out. Sig strength will be less, but sig to noise level will be better. This is the idea behind the beverage on ground (BOG) antenna. Sometimes having both and a switch between the two helps with pulling out those weak stations. Thanks.
It could have been better at receive because it was closer matched to the wavelength.
Guess what I just took my 36 foot vertical wire antenna down and threw the wire on the ground ready to pack it away because of the wind . it also has a 6 foot copper ground rod .. I decided to test it out for the he'll of It before watching your video . wow ZERO interference on the empty bands unlike the vertical and picking up serbia and Moscow from the UK booming signal ...i can garentee it does actually work you just have to be lucky with the placement of the wire as I was earlyer on .
ground mounted antennas are usually aimed at obtaining a lower signal strength to noise ratio--the signal strength drop off is usually less than the noise drop off, making reception much better--if one tries to transmit thru a ground mounted antenna, usually the effort comes to grief--
i have a 28 foot diameter loop that many times is my best antenna for reception on 160m and even occasionally on 80m--unfortunately i can't get that loop directly on the ground at my present location--if i could, i suspect my S/N ratio might improve even more---but i wouldn't dream of trying to transmit thru it--
Remember that an antenna on the ground is probably a NVIS (near vertical) antenna, so it will be best on 40 meters in the day and 80 meters at night.
I use a groundwire antenna that is under my grass in SW Ohio, for nighttime listening to hams (cw, ssb) while I drift off to sleep. No worries about lightning since it's in the ground and only a 28 gauge enameled wire which won't carry much current. I get ham activity coast to coast with no problem. The grasswire works great for me!
Yep, but one thing. You're not immune to lightning. Any nearby strike of a building or tree will generate a huge electrical pulse in the wire, even on the ground.
It will depend on the freq. VLF , lower frequencies prefer ground transmission. As you go higher it will fail.
I live in an HOA, so experimentaton is imperative. I have a temporary 40 meter dipole set up in the yard. It is about 2.5 feet off the ground, definitely below 3 feet. The legs on the dipole are 30.1 feet per side, that is what it took to get an SWR of 1.2 or better on the general frequency range of 7.178 to 7.300 MHz. The antenna has been working great, didn't think it would get past Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, & Nevada, but it has, and not bad, LOL.
I am in NE Utah and have had QSOs all the way to the east coast, signals of 2/1 to 4/4 , which is way better than the total ZERO I expected. Given the actual band conditions (not the good fair poor ratings found on the daily Solar Terrestial Data forecast) this antenna has done pretty good. I go on the OMISS 40 meter net in the evenings, and this is where I have been testing it.
This is a temporary setup, I hope to put it up to 35 feet later this week, waiting on a friend to bring the ladder we need to get up on the roof. I have been using this setup for the past 4 weeks and I am impressed with its performance. I would love to see what it will do on a day where the actual band conditions are good, but I am more anxious to get the antenna up and working under normal operating conditions. Given the HOA thing, I am happy that it works where it is now, not optimum, but it works, it is an alternative should the roof mount become an issue.
My elevation here is circa 6900 feet. The soil is conducive to plant growth, flowers, berries, apples, & vegetables, the soil retains moisture, but by 1 PM it is dry, and I set the sprinklers to go off at that time so the Kentucky Blue Grass stays green. When we dig here, it is mostly large rocks going down, the 8 FT copper ground rod became an angled one, no way to it drive straight down here. We are in the Rocky Mountains, LOL!
WW7GBA
Louis
If you used a more insulated (from the ground) cord, I'm wondering if it would perform better. Like maybe a long extension cord. (It would have a thicker rubber sheath. Or, it could just be that the horizontal polarization is cutting down your signal.
Hello Kevin. I'm in the process of making the LoG (loop on the ground) antenna. It is two 15'x15' square loops in phase to produce a sharper bidirectional pattern. This is a receive antenna only. Each loop will have a 6.25:1 transformer at the feed point and fed with 75 ohm coax. I'll be able to compare the snr with my 80m full wave horizontal delta loop and 3/4 wave inverted L which are 50' off the ground. I'll let you know the results. 73 Scott - kl4nu
I know the thread is old, but I just installed a LoG.
I have QSOd on ground antennas. The wire must be at least one wavelength long and radiates off the end of the wire. The longer the wire, the lower the take off angle. Ground antennas are lossy but are also directional. If you need a stealth antenna this is a good compromise solution. Check out K3MT's "grasswire" experiments in Bermuda.
I spend my winters camping outside of Yuma on reservation listening with PL660 & picked you up on 80 meters, you had to be close, although I do get 20, 40 & 80 meter bands both day & night.
I messed around with a 'grasswire' antenna, and came much to the same conclusion you did here in Michigan. I recently ordered an interesting noise canceling kit which uses a 'noise antenna' for picking up RF interference to inject 180 degrees out of phase into your receive signal. I wonder how a ground wire would work for that purpose.
73 de w8tam
BOGs (Beverage On the Ground) are a real thing. Actual sensitivity isn't important, because you're looking for low noise and directivity, and make up for the lack of sensitivity with a preamp, and it's a receive only system.
Wether or not an antenna will work lying on the ground will depend on the ground. I have used a special Harris antenna designed for desert and that works fine as long as you operate in a desert as I did in Afghanistan. The same antenna does not work back home. Not even close. But funny enough it springs to life again when put on top of deep snow. We typically get 4-5 meters of snow during winter. To many think of ground as the ground we stand on, but antennas doesn't always agree. Normally it will be correct, but try operating in desert where water is way down in the ground (water surface or water table, I don't know what you call it in english) and the ground it self isn't very conductive.
One of the reasons we discovered something was of in Afghanistan was that low hanging dipoles didn't give us NVIS. Not until we placed a wire as a reflector on the ground below the dipole. After a while we got hold of this specially designed Harris antenna which gave both decent comms, but also some covert antenna site.
Kevin...in this video when you were tuned to 3.923.5 that was me calling the net. The rig I usually use it my IC-7300 driving a Heathkit SB-220 running about 800 watts output to a 160 meter doublet. I was surprised how strong my sig was with your antenna laying on the ground. I have done the same experiment you have done with a G5RV and found the same as you did....it worked but not anywhere as good as when it is strung up in the trees. 73 WB7S
What was the length of the end fed antenna on the ground? What was the difference in signal to noise ratios between the end fed on ground vs the vertical, especially as you came down in frequency? Did you put an RF choke at the receive end of the antenna (a loop might need one at the antenna feed point as well to keep it from being grounded)? What is the ground conductivity rating at the test site (higher is better for lower angled reception)? Did you try the wire as a loop on the ground with a 9:1 balun (loops don't need a ground or counterpoise)? Did you exceed 1/2 wavelength of the end fed on ground in your tests (loops can handle up to one wavelength before reception pattern goes bonkers)? Did you know that you may have just been warming up the earthworms trying to transmit into the ground (a loop can make a useful Receive-only antenna if one has space restrictions)? Did you have a preamp turned on which may have just amplified the ambient noise? Did you see this web page ( kk5jy.net/LoG/ )? Did you see these experiments ( forums.radioreference.com/threads/160-20m-log-loop-on-ground.370110/ )? Or this experiment with 40 feet of looped wire, amplified ( th-cam.com/video/2YhK0Mvd58w/w-d-xo.html )?
Here in Colorado we are dry as a bone and sitting on solid rock it takes over 70' to get a real decent ground in places
I can look at WWV when I walk out my front door
if i recall correct a " beverage " antenna (recieve only ) are used just above ground about a foot maybe two for low noise reception
One time I was doing some repairs to my antenna system and had to lay my beam on the actual roof, I live in an apartment so its hard for me to drop all the antennas, and I was amazed that i was still working DX even tho the antenna was pointing approx 40 degs into the sky due to the slope of my roof :D. I know not technically on the ground but it was flat on my roof...
Another thought is you used anlong wire. I ran an 80m dipole laying on the ground last year for summer field day and made 20 contacts in 30 minutes. But, like you said, mine was but one test. KK4BK
We did the same experiment on field day about 6 years ago. We made QSO’s but it wasn’t stellar. Art. K2ADC
I laid wires from my Alpha antenna 9:1 balum 60 ft on bushes from the vertical lug and radials on the ground. I was using an Icom 7100 with ldg tuner. Using Winlink Express and ARDOP. I was able to connect to a station 300 + miles away on 80 m. I could not get my wires up in the trees. Gave up and remember some thing Bonnie said about laying her dipole on Bushes. ( HF Pack).
You were running NVIS mode, which has a range of about 600 miles.
I use earth spike antenna for VLF-MW bands...
Sounds like a plan I have a good matched end fed I'll give it a try.
Hi ... Did you measure the naked (no tuner) SWR?.... Have played with these critters a bit. Ussaly see the length shrink 20 to 30%. Your right...it all depends on what kind a ground you lay it on... And as best I could tell... it turns a other wise good antenna into a cloud warmer.... signal strenrh will be down 20 dB...(suggest a switchable attenuator)... noise even more... but how would you be able to tell ...with no noise... to be found in radio paridise!!!... Tnx for a great video...73
But it will be a NVIS cloud warmer.
Adding any height is going to improve signal in and out. I'm thinking a wire, strung on the top of a fence, would be better than that ground wire.
Nice to see an experiment "out of the box".
How often are you on 3.923.50 it’s the local rag chew and the frequency for the Wyoming cowboy net
Research the ELPA antenna. There are several papers written and the military had one in production. I have one and use it in other configurations.
I've seen that before. Raised 1 to 3 feet off the ground so the ground acts like a reflector. It's an NVIS antenna for near vertical radiation and a local area of coverage. 100mi or so.
Would that be found on Archive.org?
Hi Kevin,
Think I watched some of those videos you mentioned. I might have tried an on ground receiving antenna the BOG, but had my doubts about it's effectiveness for transmitting. Appears you answered that question. Did you participate in the CQ 160m SSB contest this weekend? 73 WB3BJU
Maybe you could compare the light bulb to the ground antenna. ;-) We used to employ a 40W appliance light bulb as a dummy load when tuning up some tube transmitters. I think,not always but generally, getting the wire off of the ground is better. Good video. 73.
The problems I see on the ground is that it is high capacitance to the ground, even though the ground is dry. That being said it will change the effective length of the very least, and that is not accounting for the amount of signal that is absorbed by the ground. There is only one practical use that I could see and that is spacing at a set distance from the ground and tuning for EME or other such communications where the intent is to eliminate one or more signals at the same frequency that are from the horizontal direction. Also when close to the ground I would probably look at that as more of a waveguide than antenna as it would be tuned with the ground as part of the propagation. Also if buried in the ground it would mostly pickup changes in the magnetic field of the earth, power lines and other such very very low frequencies. I know this from experimenting as a kid, before I understood that an antenna is a tuned circuit unto itself.
Kevin, head West from Quartzite to Orange County, California and camp at Bolsa Chica State Beach above Huntington Beach. You can test your ground antenna theory on the marsh and mud flats adjacent. A lot of roving hams campy here and work scads of DX with conventional antennas. Be a good experiment.
Sorry you missed Yuma. It was a gas!
Noticed a lot less noise on receive with the ground antenna. Not much as a transmit antenna though. KE5TJ
It's good for NVIS operation.
Interesting investigation / experiment. Got me thinking, suppose you had a resonant dipole antena, and for some reason you could only get half of it in the air. The other half of the dipole you laid straight out, but on the ground. Therefore, the dipole is in a straight line, but one half in the air, the other on the ground. Would it work??
Yep. That's a quarter wave vertical with only one radial.
Could work because your antenna is on a very lossy ground, but having lots of room, you could add "gain" having at least 1 wavelength.
I sent Jerry WB7S the link so he can hear himself from your location. He is in Basin WY. The WY cowboy net is there Monday-Friday at 5:30pm till the net is done. OJ
You Kevin:
Another GREAT video! I agree with your assessment, but there are some expeienced voices here as well, with the loop antennas standing out. Worthy of more experimentation & another video, (which I suggest : ) Have a great time out in the Southwest, check out some of the gunslinger sites & report on them. You might find some ham interaction!
73's,
de seeker/Jeff WA7LFP
Set of the wire sitting on the ground about taking sticks up to at least 3 inches or 4 inches high from the ground try that I’m just curious
It should start to behave as an nvis antenna as you raise it off the ground. The Earth becomes a reflector, and a signal goes almost straight up.
Without seeing but a few minutes of the experiment I guessed the dry ground would provide the "differential" between a ground rod driven into the ground and the antenna. So did you have a grounding rod or just the counter pose?
thanks kevin
Nice ground heater ... whatever was making it to the antenna.
Wasn't this covered back in the 50's and 60's with radios for cold war fall out shelters?
Did you try for NVIS contacts while on the ground ?
Yes I have had a qso with antenna lying on the ground.
Nice location! Is there a charge to camp there? I'd like to get my RV out there and do some antenna experimenting! ;)
There are many free for 2 weeks BLM areas out here. Then there's long-term visitor areas where I'm at, which charged $40 for 2 weeks. But you get access to a dump station, dumpsters, and freshwater.
@@loughkb Thanks for the info.!
Did you try insulated wire on the antenna?
oh forgot to mention so would it basically work as an NVIS antenna being on the ground???? I know there is a BOG antenna Beverage On Ground.////// would it help if the ground antenna were longer for receive???
Uhmmm....what am I not seeing? Why would you use a 9:1 unun driving the dipole? Is the reactive component of the ground level dipole so large that a 9:1 is justified?
Well, your assumption has merit...windstorm here in S. Michigan over last 24hrs took down my 40M dipole...it is laying on ground and deck...no receive now...sigh...spring cannot come soon enough! 73 OM
Quartzite AZ?? If so, have you seen the dreaded bookstore guy??
Wonder if a beverage on ground would do better ????
Hi kevin interesting stuff, what wspr setup are you using, please ?
A raspberry Pi computer, connected to a Yaesu FT-817 through my DuinoVOX scratch built USB rig interface. (yes, I did a video on it, search for Duinovox)
Interesting video. Thank you. Should 'radials' be off the ground also?
Michael VA6XMB
Now this is an interesting question. With these conclusions demonstrated, it sure would be interesting to compare the performance of a vertical with ground radials vs a vertical with above ground radials.
Thanks for the video Kevin.
Now that's a good question, and I think I've seen Arguments for either. I might try to do a test someday, with a vertical, perhaps on VHF.
good! anyone got thoughts of same ant. laid on a flat roof building 30 ft up?
cheers 73
That would most likely work well provided that there is little metal or anything else conductive such as wet roofing near the antenna. You will probably need to adjust for the capacitive effects of the roofing material with an antenna tuner to get a really good signal. Nails are not an issue, just how close the antenna is to the flashing that is used. The farther from the flashing the better, as it will look almost exactly as an open air antenna at the same height. I used to run an antenna under the eve of the roof in a house and it worked great, and I could get signals from nearly all countries in the world in the SW and from 160 to 20 meters. Unlicensed and even though I had a transmitter with an 807 in the final at the time, never thought of putting it on the air.
O also ran into ham That was a civilian contractor down here in Florida Tampa Mac dill and they buried antennas and they work fine. The tone I wasn't playing with deck. A could say much about it because it was classified, LMAO using 1000 watts
Why wouldn't you lay the counterpoise at a right angle?
The closest you can get to running it in the opposite direction from the radiator, the better the performance. A 90 degree angle would be the limit before you start to fold it back on the radiator and lose performance.
@@loughkb Okay, cool.
Can chicken wire be used as a antenna
Sure. I once may a contact using the backstop fence at a baseball diamond. Anything metal can radiate RF, but not very efficiently unless it's a half a wavelength in dimension.
I only got one question for you this is Katie zero uef Chuck and I didn't catch it did you actually sell your house to move into your RV or do you still have your house and you're just out rving I was curious but you know what they said curiosity is what killed the cat so 73
Yes, I sold it. For me now, home is where I park it.
Help. I have a 40m delta loop. I can hear many stations but no one hears me. I've tried my IC-7300 and KX3 but not one response. This is over several days of trying. Any ideas? JJK
Is there a tuner involved? What SWR does your rig show when you transmit? 73 de w8tam
Using the turner in the 7300. 1-1 SWR. But try as I might no one hears me. FYI the bottom on the triangle is close to my block wall.
@@johnkershaw9575 Seems odd noone can hear you. Just checkin'... You're using lower side band on 40m? Is there a balun on your deltaloop? I'm in Michigan, and happy to tune a frequency if you want to give it a try.
I checked the SWR when I am transmitting and it's above 3. It tunes out flat and when I run an SWR band check its ok but transmitting is high.
@@johnkershaw9575 There's something gone wrong then. Generally speaking, SWR shouldn't change under power. Above 3, unless you have the 7300 in emergency mode, it won't tune it.
Interesting experiment !!!!!
ANY antenna will work. An incandescent light bulb will work for an antenna.
All antennas will work better than another antenna. A dipole at 20 feet will work better than one on the ground. One at 70 feet will work better than one at 20 feet.
A beam at 40 feet will work better than a dipole. A beam at 80 feet will work better than one at 40 feet, etc, etc, etc.
Minute 0.52: Tesla say, only Groundwaves and not Spacewaves (Ionispheric), he means, no curvature on the Earth.
How about trying going to the beach and putting your ground out into the ocean and land I and 10 on the beach see what it does
Neat experiment. Now you know for one case how it worked. We have high mineral content here in MO. Try metal detecting and you'll see.
A buried antenna will have its resonance at about 25-30% of the length of an antenna up in the air due to dielectric effects. The feed impedance will be higher as well. Your antenna was not properly matched. The military has used on ground and buried antennas for years, one application was for backup comms to missile silos. See the text "Antennas in Matter: Fundamentals, Theory and Applications by Owens and Smith" and www.rfcafe.com/references/short-wave-craft/images/buried-antenna-performance-development-small-resonant-buried-antennas-ad-783-274.pdf
I use a ground dipole on 472kHz, about 480 feet long ( in free space it would be nearly 2000' long), it has an impedance of about 200 ohms.
73 Warren K2ORS
Do you know K7DEE ?
A blade antenna like that used on aircraft might be what your talking about.
Thank your very much for this ACTUAL real testing. Those of us who do think about these things rarely have the ability to go out and do so. I've been interested in 1K submarine communications for years, but to no avail. Lotsa land need just for listening I guess, maybe Area 51??? Water listening from NO-WATER regions??? Than just seems GOVERNMENTS to me. Thanx.
Simple summary: Yes, but not well.
Moisture content of the ground is surely another variable.
my thought was a 8 ft ground rod! Maybe insulated wire antenna too.
Looked like Quartzsite
Same general area. I was about 50 miles south of the spot they do Qfest.
Geez,, 1s over noise floor and they still stomp you.. ha.
Load the box springs. Hihi
Ground antennas work IN the ground, not ON the ground.
Hell-o K.L.
Gulf war lay on ground sand in configuration of letter shape of H they buried in the sand hf antenna it work N9IWW
ELPA
Several questions....So are you basically homeless now living in a camper? LOL we should call you the Nomad Ham. also I would not think it would be very quiet as all those campers all have 12 volt systems with some solar and all those PWM inverters in the campers causing hash......???? I guess its less than in town in a house with all the crap we have plugged in these days?
There is some noise. I can tell when my neighbors have their TV's on. Between the noise, the floor is S0.
It can't possibly work because it's "grounded" ;-) ha ha...