You cant’s build a 4sq without the verticals and you need 4 of them.

Some are using wires that will also work.

I am using aluminum tubes and they are 5mm of thickness.

The thickness of mine has a reason, I am living in a very windy location.

My lovely wife is working in a sort of home depot not that far away and they deliver the aluminum at my doorstep.

I mount my verticals on some water pipes knocked about 2m into the ground, on the water pipes I am using hardwood to isolate the verticals from the ground.

The first thing I did was measuring the ¼ wave distance of each vertical.

After that I started knocking down the water pipes in to the ground and you need radials lots of them. There are many good websites on this subject and there are some fables on this subject also.

If you use ground mounted verticals the radials has not to be tuned! Because the ground will detuned them if you use an elevated system than you have to tune the radials.

The conductivity of the ground is also an important factor a factor that you can’t change.

I am using aluminum wire, like I mentioned before I want a “cheap” system.

The aluminum wire has a thickness of 2mm² and we can buy a spool of 400m for around 20€. The aluminum will eventually degrade in the ground so how smaller the thickness how quicker that will happen.

The disadvantage of the aluminum wire is that it will curl up if you lay them down to counter that I pin them into the grass. On top of the aluminum wire I put some galvanized chicken wire. The reason for that is because I could buy them very cheaply and to be sure the aluminum wires cant curl up again.

A perfect system is to lay down the radials in a perfect circle around the verticals. Well at my property that was not possible  (a second best system is also a good system).

As you can see the radials are not crossing over each other.

1 Vertical they look all similar.

After a few months or so all radials and chicken wire were not visible anymore.