Re: driving copper pipe

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz>

On 6 Aug 2003, at 17:00, Tesla list wrote:

 > Original poster: "Rodney Goolsby by way of Terry Fritz 
<teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jeronimo-at-bright-dot-net>
 >
 > I'm sure many of you know how hard it is to drive long pieces of copper
 > pipe into hard ground to make an RF ground, such as my yard which has a lot
 > of clay in it.  I was wondering if it would be alright to fill a 5' piece
 > of .5" or .75" copper pipe with quick cement to make it sturdy enough to
 > pound into the ground.  If not what other method could I use to get the
 > pipe into the ground?

Dig a hole, put the pipe in together with a piece of PVC pipe to
allow watering through a hosepipe and backfill it. That's what I did.
I brazed a bundle of scrap copper pipe to form a mis-shapen aerial
type structure and threw it down a hole. I also brazed a number of 5'
long solid copper scraps to form a series of shallowly buried radials
to take advantage of moderate rainfall and connected those to the top
of the buried mass. It works reasonably well.

Malcolm