im looking for set up a music fest setup, but my luck with grounds has been iffy. so i been thinkin of basically making a loaded dipole with a transmitter, solar/batt, and wireless audio reciever all mounted in the center of the antenna. DC ground optional. no wires leading up to it unless you decide its permanent enough to throw a spike into the DC gnd. I have a 120' tall pine tree that i've been eyeing. i can fire an arrow/rope over it and get this unit 100' off the ground if i can get it tuned out and working right. anyone else try a setup like this?
An observation: other things equal, installing that dipole 100 feet above the earth will produce no greater signal strength than if it is 10 feet or so above the earth. The lower elevation will provide a lot easier access to tune the system to resonance.
The reason for this is that radiation from MW systems most useful for reception near the antenna site is the ground wave -- and that will be ~ identical from a dipole at 10 foot elevation and/or 100 foot elevation. It isn't important at MW frequencies to elevate the transmit antenna to produce "line-of-sight" paths to receive antennas, as it is at VHF and above.
Also - a center-fed dipole is a balanced radiator, and does not need (nor can it use) an r-f ground reference.
I think the "cap hat" on the lower element of the antenna should be called a "cap boot."
haha yes, cap boot, which is basically the artificial ground as i see it. hence why im about getting it up and above the rooflines around here. at music festival sites i want to get the transmitter/antenna above the heads and hands of spun hippies so it doesn't get detuned or throw a shock to anyone so there is a safety issue at play here too. i've had sporadic luck using baseloaded systems on a spike, and theres no way i can lay out a ground plane anywhere, nor do i want to do that much work for a site i'll broadcast from for a whole weekend a year