wrote:


Clean oil is an insulator.

An oil film with who knows what gunk in it is not such a good insulator.

So, if you change the oil on your antenna regularly...

Nevertheless, I stand by my statement.

In order for dirty oil to effect the transmission, it would have to
carbonize the oil into a conductive track shorting across the insulator
at the base of the monopole. The peak power output from the transponder
is about about 250W, which puts about SQR(250*50)=~110V across the
antenna base.

A little dirty oil will not arc over at 100V!

MikeM