Mark,
I'm no expert and relatively new to the Beverage antenna but have done
lots of experimenting with them.
My thoughts....
First don't give up short Beverages work just fine...you just work with
with you have.
I would try to use good rg6 one piece no splice...you should not have to
use a preamp.
Put 450 ohm resistor on the antenna.
Also test the transformer with the 450 ohm resistor.
Antenna analyzer will check the antenna.
Few years ago I put up a 580' wire to the south unterminated ..I left it
up for a year.
It worked really good for me and opened my eyes to the rx antenna.
The next year I put a 480 ohm resistor on it and it really played good.
After that I put a north Beverage at 300' it worked very good.
So now I changed things around a little.
South Beverage is 350' Nice and straight and this one works real good
f/b seems good too.
West Beverage is 250' nice and straight and works good but the f/b is
not the best.
The the north Beverage is now 450' but has a bow in it...so I call it
the "Oxbow Beverage" it starts at abt 40 degs and bends to the south to
abt 200 degs.
This one the output is down but still works...this is also my longest
run of rg 6 cable.
I am troubleshooting this antenna now..
Good links ...lots of good ones but I have been to these abt a million
times.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181115070846/http://www.w0btu.com/Beverage_antennas.html
http://www.w8ji.com/beverages.htm
ps://www.youtube.com/user/ve6wz/videos
Anyway keep us posted and good luck.
Fred KB4QZH
On 6/30/2020 2:56 PM, Mark Lunday wrote:
"Beverages just want to work" is what I have heard.
Not having much luck with that here. I suspect operator/installation error.
I did a lot of reading and I must be doing something wrong.
* 250 feet of insulated wire strung out in 030 degrees direction toward
EU, pretty straight, varying in height from 4 to 6 feet, running through thick
brush with no metal objects or artificial elements along the run.
* 9:1 transformer at feed point with ground rod
* 300 feet of coax, mix of RG-8, MMR-400 to get to the edge of the woods
from the house
* No terminating resistor
On bands 160-40, the signals are very weak. I am monitoring WSPR, FT8. I can
hear signals on 160-40 but they are way down compared to dipoles and inverted L
on the same bands. Like 20-30 db down. From what I read, I should NOT need an
HF pre-amplifier, right?
Signals on 30 and 20 seem to be better and I can copy some DX from EU on FT8.
I will try installing a new ground rod, the old one is 10 years old and perhaps
not making a good ground connection at the feedpoint. The transformer is
brand new, so that's not an issue. The coax has tested out fine. Soil is
central North Carolina clay, a bit dry at this time.
I am guessing performance is poor on 160-40 because of the short length and
that it's bi-directional (no terminating resistor), which I am seeing on 30
meters. But I did not think it would be THIS bad on 160-40....
Mark Lunday, WD4ELG
Greensboro, NC FM06be
wd4elg@arrl.net<mailto:wd4elg@arrl.net>
http://wd4elg.blogspot.com
SKCC #16439 FISTS #17972 QRP ARCI #16497
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