Hi Kris,

I have used many different verticals over the years and different ground
systems as well.  I lived in a duplex once with just no place to put an
antenna other than a vertical.  However, I couldn't have any ground system.
So I tried what a friend had done once.  You may be able to discover more
about this on the net some place by doing a search.  I purchased, they
weren't very expensive back then, four 8 foot ground rods.  I drove them in
around the base of the vertical about 6 to 9 inches away.  The house was
about 10 feet to the south, a 3 foot retaining wall to the north with a
chain link fence on top of it and I doubted the thing would ever work.  It
was a 14 AVQ 40 through 10 vertical.  It worked super well.  Later, when I
was broke, I traded some things for a little HW7 1 watt CW transceiver that
worked on 40, 20, and 15 meters.  In 18 months, this was back during the mid
seventies when the bands were jus so so, I worked over 600 contacts, 14
countries, and I worked all 50 states on 40 meters.  I got about 2 watts out
of it on 40 meters, too.  I worked a lot of 20 meters QRP and I often got 20
over S9 signals from W6 stations.  I have used ground systems over the years
and especially when shunt feeting my tower for 160 meters.  That time, I
laid down hundreds of feet of wire.  Locally, it made a good 10 DB
difference with the guys with whom I regularly talked.  I have run verticals
on the roof and on top of a tower with up to 8 ground radials spread out.
If you don't want to spend money on the solid ground rods, get tubing from
the junk yard.  Pound those into the ground around your vertical, fill them
with water and salt, or as much salt, such as rock salt, as you can.  Use
hose or pipe clamps to attached the short wires to the base of the antenna.
Use as long of tubing as you can, even longer than 10 feet if you can.  Yep,
it works very well and even creates a better ground.  Frankly, it has been
discovered that ground wires on the ground, or even a few inches above the
ground, create a better ground reflector than if they are buried but that is
often is inconvenient.  You can, as I have seen done many times before, use
chicken wire instead.  I had a friend in western Colorado who had a 4
vertical aray using 65 foot towers on 80 meters.  He had 20 thousand feet of
wire under it, he lived on a small farm, but he had yards and yards of
chicken wire which he unrolled and left laying on top of the ground all
winter.  During the summer months, when they used the field his antennas
were in, he rolled the chicken wire up.  If you just have ground rods to use
and you can run a wire from the base to a near by fence or out side cold
water faucet, do that.  The four square ground rod arrangement creates a
uniformity in the ground characteristics.  when high tower 50 foot all band
verticals were popularly used, they had a 6 ground rod configuration they
recomended which included planting the rods at exact measurements from the
base of the vertical, it was a 3 legged tower affair for the first 25 feet,
and there were two ground rods spaced at these exact angles off of each leg
of the tower.  As I said, hunting for this type of info on the net will be
helpful to read.  I have, for many years, used the older r7 vertical on my
roof at 20 feet.  It has worked very well and has no ground system but I am
confinced that the ground system is the best way to go.  There is a large
house sitting in my backyard now where my 65 foot tower used to be so I
cannot have much of a ground system any longer.  The r7, I wish it was the
r8, works very well, on the other hand, on the roof.  People make fun of
verticals and even World Radio Magazine called them dummy loads once but
with all the verticals I have tried, they are good antennas even under poor
conditions as far as the installation is concerned.  Let me tell you a funny
story.  A friend of mine here in Denver moved into one of the covenant areas
where the yuppies live.  His wife had a lot of money.  He was crying over
the fact he could only work mobile now because the housing area didn't allow
anything like a tower or outside antenna.  I asked him if they allowed for a
bird feeder on a pole.  He checked and discovered you could have a bird
feeder, or bird house for nesting, on a pole in your backyard.  God bless
those nature lovers.  I told him to get out his trapped vertical, which was
only 18 feet for 40 through 10 meters, and put it inside PVC pipe.  Drill
holes, I said, for the capacity hat wires to poke out and they will thing
they are perches for the birds.  Put some wooden box with one big hole in it
at the very top so they think you indeed are putting up a bird house or even
buy a nice looking bird house and stick it on top of the PVC pipe.  Drive
your 4 ground rods deep and level with the ground so the grass covers them
up.  then they will never noe.  I told him to bury his coax over to the
house.  He did all this and ran a 2 KW amplifier and got out like a cannon
and nobody in the neighborhood knew where all that TVI was coming from, haw.

73,
Phil.
K0NX