Moonraker had a deal on the last weekend for earthing stakes. I bought the solid copper version and buried it underneath the feedpoint of my antenna.
The 9:1 UNUN feeding the 80m-6m length wire had a cable attached to the counterpoise cable so I connected it to the rod. The rig and ATU had to alter their settings to compensate for the change.
I still couldn't get the antenna to tune on 80m but all other bands were matched as before. I got a contact with a Japanese station JA1OTT on 17m and a Uruguay station CX9AU on 15m. So still working OK on all bands 40m to 6m including WARC bands.
Then I ran a few random length radials (just insulated wire) connected to the earthing stake and laid them on the ground. One of them I ran underneath the main antenna wire like a mirror image. Then I went back to the shack and found the external ATU (LDG Z-100Plus|) would match on 80m. This is a bit of a result so I will keep experimenting.
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