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Radiation pattern after adding radials.
10 July 2025 | by The other day, I battled the heat and installed more radials for my Hustler 4BTV. I have an extra 14-gauge wire left over from when I first installed the radials, and for some time, I was planning to install the remainder, but never got around to it. Well, it is now done, and I am about 15 radials richer, bringing the total to close to 40. After the install, I was wondering if my radiation pattern has changed at all? I connected my WSPR transmitter over the period of 24 hours. For some reason, when I set it up, it was only sending signals out on 20 and 40m. I found out I neglected to save the settings, and the 20m and 40m setup was from the last time I used it. So I only have at this time data for those two bands.
Below are the patterns before the radial additions.
After the radials upgrade
4 Responses to “Radiation pattern after adding radials.”
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Hope you did not work too hard on that as the “improvement” appears to be quite insignificant.
Good morning Rick and thanks for stopping by, it was a very enjoyable time in the out of doors and any radio work is never hard work. It does appear to be insignificant but I had the extra radials sitting in a drawer and decided to install them. I then was just wanting to see what if any difference there was in the pattern.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
I have an 43′ ground mounted vertical with 30 32 foot radials out and have a large portion of the circle uncovered because of my house location and a very hard packed gravel drive way. I have very poor coverage to the South East which has lots of radials. I’ve been thinking of putting more out in the uncovered area to see what my coverage is but some would be much shorter because of the house which is to my south and driveway which is North East. After viewing your change of coverage I’d like to know which directions you placed the additional radials related to your coverage improvements. My coverage to the North East is usually very good and that’s my poorest radial placement. My best radial coverage is to the East and South East which confuses me.
Thanks for your submission and would like your thoughts on my radial coverage improvements.
73, Chuck
AA0RI
Good morning Chuck and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. It would be interesting to see once the extra radials are down how things look. For sure it would not hurt to add the extra radials and over all would probably improve things.
73,
Mike
VE9KK