"... Comparisons Between Ground Surface and Elevated Radials"

[k4kyv]

There are legends about grass fires in the vicinity of the WLW tower when they ran their half-megawatt in the late 1930s. Farmers reportedly got rf burns off their fences. But I doubt a transmitter at amateur power levels would ignite anything, except maybe in the middle of a dry pine forest out west right now.

You might get rf burns off the hot ends of the elevated radials.  I have a small radial system stapled under the floor to the joists of the shack.  They are cut to a quarter-wave on 40m, to establish a cold rf spot at the ground lead where it exits the shack. This helps with rf rectification problems that were wreaking havoc with my audio equipment on that band, and stray rf that was affecting the receiver. Once, I fired up a dead carrier and crawled under the shack with a neon lamp, and it glowed brightly at the ends of the wires.  I could pull an arc with a hand-held metallic object, such as a nail or screw-driver.

I would pity the poor sod who inadvertently walked into or brushed against my open wire feeders, or the base of the tower when it is operating as a half-wave vertical, while I was running full strap.