A Memory of a Tiny Ground Rod

Yesterday when I was plowing a tiny farm in the garden preparing for spinach, I found a kind of metal rod in the soil, rusted away as shown on the photo. 

In a few seconds, I remembered that it had been buried in the ground as a ground earth peg for a vertical. It has deformed almost beyond recognition of its original form but still brought me back to the old time.

In early 80s, when coming back on the radio after over 10 years absence, all I could afford for an antenna at a two storied small resident dormitory at a med school hospital was a vertical on the roof. Maybe, neighbors must thought that young resident had become nutty to climb up on the roof and put up a long rod there. Being around a peak of solar cycle, I could enjoy working world wide with that simple antenna. But it was tough for me to compete with those with beams then. The bands were closing down for me earlier than beam owners. I was dreaming of a beam.

Moving here, my birth place, from that small dormitory, in mid 80's, one of my projects was to put up an antenna. Again, however, it was a ground mounted vertical for 40m. It took me a few more years before my dream of beam on a tower came true. A pole about 25 feet long was put up along a tree shorter than it. A quarter wave length wire was set along the pole. The remaining wire was curled randomly for circles at the top. It was intended to work not only as a top loading but also as a capacity hat. Mechanically poor structure. It was still working well.

The clue was the radials, I knew. I believe raw copper wires of random length were buried only an inch or two. They were only several pieces of wire and not extended to all the direction since the antenna was set at the border to a neighbor's place.

It was cold winter. In order to add more radials, I have bought a big soldering iron. It was a fun for me, expecting any better performance, to make more radials and to see how it worked. Like Yagi beams' elements, they have worked more efficiently until its number reached around 5 or 6. More radials than that have not given any better result so far as I noticed in the QSOs. More number of radials seemed to lower Q of the antenna and it used to be broad in resonance, even though I am not sure it was good from the standpoint of efficiency.

Those days, I used to talk to Tim VK3IM. In early evening hours, while I operated with this new antenna on 40m, he was heading back home from his office in the city of Melbourne to Mt. Eliza. It took him an hour or two to drive there. As posted before, he was using a whip with a huge top hat/loading coil on his old Mazda Van. His signal was always surprisingly loud with that antenna. When I told him my vertical's radials were of random length wire not sufficient for the quarter wave, he advised me to put a ground earth peg to each radial. A peg? I didn't know of that. It was a short ground rod which compensates the deficient length of a radial. It won't take me too long before getting the short rods and buried them in the ground at the ends of radials. I don't know how it has worked. But such discussion and conduct after that themselves were much fun for me. Tim was a great and experienced conversationalist on CW those days. 

It is a story, as told, before my beam project was materialized. But still most enthusiastic and passionate for radio those days. It might be most brilliant days for me in this hobby. Maybe, in my life as well. We could pursue crazily something only when we lack it in life.