Antenna thoughts
 

Yesterday part of a large tree fell in my yard. It took down half of my G5RV antenna that I have been using for years. Now, I could repair or replace the wire on the antenna, but I am kicking around the thought of replacing it with a vertical. Now the problem, radials. I have so many tree roots in the lawn it woulld be impractical to burry radials. I have two possible locations. One would be low along a chain link fence at the back of the yard. The fence I think could help as somewhat of a radial, but the distance from the house may be a problem. I would have to trench the back yard and burry the coax. Again the roots will make that difficult. The other possibility, which I am leaning more to, is a small tower at the house with a vertical on it. It would need to be something that didn't need a lot of guy wires if any, and no buried radials. I have plenty of tower to use since the original plan was a small footprint beam antenna. Trees however are a problem with that at this time. What I am looking for is thoughts and recommendations on this project. I am interested in 10 through 40 meters. I rarely ever have used 80 meters, and really do not have the real estate for 160 meters. What are your thoughts and recommendations on this please.

I use a pair of MFJ off-center fed dipoles that, between the 2 of them, get me all but one band from 80 to 6 meters. I thought about a vertical, but like you, getting enough radials was a problem due to tree roots (and at my house, rocks). I have enough problems with noise on my wire antennas here, and seeing as how verticals tend to add to the noise floor, I decided against going that route early on.

Whatever you decide, I'd be interested in hearing how it works for you. Good luck on your antenna project!

In giving it some more thought, If I can get the apex up high enough to attach the ends of the G5RV to the gable ends of the house, that might work. The wires then would not be in such a position that falling tree limbs would cause an issue. I have plenty of sections of tower to use, about 150 feet plus 2 top sections. The RV is 102 feet end to end. My house is only about 60 feet long. It is to late in the evening for me to do geometry, but since my house is a single story it is only about 15 feet to the roof ridge. If I use 2 sections of tower and a top, I may be able to put the apex near the top of the tower and slope down to the gable ends of the ridge or maybe to the front of the roof. I would still be able to put a rotor in and a small footprint beam after I have the tree cut back.

For starters...you don't actually bury radials...or you don't have to. They do just fine laying on top of the ground. Most people put them on top and "staple" them down in to the ground to keep them lower than their mow height.

I use a doublet. 79' long, 50' up, suspended from trees, 450 ohm ladder-line all the way to a tuner in the shack. Gets me on 40, 30, 20, and 15 with good DX....17 and 12 are..meh. I can get on 80 in small chunks and there's a bit of NVIS. Did blast some RTTY to the west coast on 80 during the last contest.