I thought the rebar was to far from
the tuner so I drove a 5 foot chunk of copper pipe into the ground
right below the tuner. Testing afterward showed that I could only
tune 20 meters through 6 meters. I am baffled by this. Clearly the
copper tube and shorter ground wire should function better that the
rebar and 15 feet of wire or is the long ground wire to the rebar
acting like a counterpoise?
You have a good ground now, but a counterpoise is also needed. Add as
much wire as possible in the crawl space, but a couple of wire as far
apart as possible as long as possible in all directions of possible
(check a counterpoise diagram for any vertical antenna and you'll get
the idea). You will also need to add or subtract wire from your
antenna. Here's some "favorable" wire lengths from the AH-4 reflector,
with the range parenthesis.
40' (35-44)
58' (52-64)
76' (70-81)
73, Jeff/wb0m
