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Running Radials the Easy Way -- Sew What?

In the process of building a stealthy vertical antenna system recently, I was thinking about how best to install an efficient radial system on my city-sized lot.

It occurred to me that other than not wanting to run over the radials with the lawnmower, that there really wasn't a real need to "bury" the radials at all.

I came up with the idea of "sewing" the radials just below the surface of the grass. The next question was finding a suitable sewing needle that was up to the task.

The solution I came up with was to use a stainless steel whip from an old Bugcatcher antenna that I was no longer using. The whip was about 4' in length and provided a nice flexible, yet thin and sturdy platform that turned out to be just perfect for threading my radial system.

Of course a longer whip would be even better, and would prevent having to pull the needle through and reinsert it again.

To use this method, I did the following:

1. Cut your radials. My antenna was designed to operate on 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters, so I cut sets of radials for each of these bands. It helps to have one wire color for each band you plan to operate on. This isn't a requirement, but makes running the wires easier as we'll see in a moment, if you plan on laying your radials in "sets".

2. Using "marking paint" (found in local hardware stores in bright orange or red, but any can of spray in a color that is easily seen will work), I marked the distance from my antenna to the place in the grass that each length of radial would terminate at, so measuring out from the radial, I made spray marks in my lawn at the termination point for a 40m, 20m, 15m, and 10m radials, and I repeated this process for each "set" of radials that I ran.

3. Drive a stake in the ground at the point where your radial system will attach to your antenna base. Leave an inch or so extra on the end of each radial to be sure that you have what you need for your solder lugs or whatever you are planning to use to attach the radials to the base of your antenna. Attach your radials to the stake. This will serve as a temporary anchor point while you run the radials.

4. Using electrical tape (duct tape will also work well), tape the other end of your radial set to your needle. There is no need to wrap multiple layers of tape. Just tape the radials to your needle so that they are secure, but not too tight.

5. Keeping the needle parallel to your lawn and close to the surface, thread the tip of the needle just beneath the surface of the grass. You'll be able to feel when you are going too deep - just pull the needle back out an inch or so and re-thread. You'll also be able to "see" your needle as it makes progress, as it will cause the grass to sort of push up as it tunnels its way through. If you run out of "needle" before you reach your spraypaint mark, simply re-insert it near its point of exit and go again, just as if you were sewing.

6. When you approach your first spraypaint mark, push the end of the needle up close to that mark, then feel for the needle and extract the tip. Then pull the rest of the needle through and out of the grass. Pull until the needle just comes out of the grass. If you measured correctly, your shortest radial should be taught and line up with your paint mark.

7. Having identified your shortest radial, pull it free from the needle. If you used a different colored wire for each band, this will be very easy to identify.

8. Now, take the portion of the radial you just pulled free from the needle and push it underneath your grass. If you need to, you can use a box cutter to make a slit in the grass and re-insert the radial end.

9. Now, this next part can be a little tricky. Pull the slack from the remaining radials until you feel tension on the shortest radial. Now, re-insert the needle, as close to the point where it exits the grass as possible, and start threading again. This is where the flex in your stainless whip will come in handy, because you may have to use this flex to give you some extra room to allow you to re-insert the tip. Work with it, if you don't get it on the first try - like I said, this is the tricky part.

10. Repeat this process until you have all of your radials laid.

As an alternative, you can lay the radials one at a time as opposed to laying them in sets. You may find this faster depending on what bands you plan on using (and therefore, how close the radials are in length to one another - this is kind of hard to explain, but if the lengths are close and you lay them in sets, it can make it hard to extract the needle and re-insert it).

That's it!

I'd be interested in hearing from other hams that have tried this method, and have any suggestions for improving it (or the instructions I've laid out here).