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Brent Regan wrote:
... you should install the 22" X . The point was (is) that to get most of the benefit you don't need a solid ground PLANE, just 4 wires spaced 90 degrees apart.
......
It may not be the absolute best solution but it gets you 98% of the way there with 10% of the effort. When was the last time THAT happened?
Brent,
I agree, 4 radials is so simple to accomplish that there is no reason not to do it and it will solve my main objection to a carbon fiber ground plane.. A small nit, I'm more of a believer in the 80/20 rule, so I would have stated, "80% of the way there with 20% of the effort. "<grin>
I had a dumb thought, but maybe it should be stated just in case. Just because carbon fiber is handled like glass/epoxy please do not confuse the results with regards to antennas. In particular, you can not place an antenna internal to the fuselage as you would with glass/epoxy. The carbon fiber/epoxy will in all likelihood, severely attenuate the antenna performance if you try to radiate through it. For these purposes think of an aluminum plane which is flying shield can.. The radiating elements must be on the external side. This would also apply to the ground radials discussed in the first part of the message. Burying the radials in the carbon fiber or such that the radials were more to the inside would go a long way toward removing the beneficial effects of the radials. The problem here is the skin effect for the RF energy which will now be constrained once again to the resistive carbon fiber surface and the loss mechanism will be reintroduced”
Charles Patton
LNC2 360 JM
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