This appeared on the CQ-Contest Reflector and was in the YCCC newsletter,
("Scuttlebutt"), I believe. It addresses the "what type of wire?" issue
pretty well.
73, Glenn, KB1GW
- - - - - - - - <cut here> - - - - - - - - - -
To: <topband@contesting.com>
"Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995
I have been amused by all the discussion regarding whether Beverages
should be made of copper or aluminum or steel wire. Copper seems to be
the wire of choice and doesn't cost that much anyway.
I built my first Beverage this past year. It was so easy I can't believe
I lived without one. Here's how to do it:
- Go to Home Depot (or other large hardware store) and buy 500 ft roll
#16 THHN or MTW wire. It's available in every color you can imagine for
about $15 per 500/ft roll.
- Go to local feed store and get some electric fence insulators. This
cost me about $3.
- Call your favorite radio dealer and order an ICE Beverage matching
box. Cost about $30.
- Go to Radio Shack and get a 400-600 ohm resistor. I actually used four
(4) 2K ohm resistors in parallel!
Roll out the wire in the desired direction. Mount the fence insulators to
convenient trees (my Beverage is not perfectly straight) about 7-9 feet
up. Connect one end of the wire to ground through the resistor. Connect
the other end to the matching box. Connect coax. Enjoy!
I did follow the conventional wisdom of sloping the ends down. I used
4 foot ground rods at each end.
I only have room for a 500 foot run. W3LPL has pointed out that 580' might
be a better length. Simple to solder some more wire on.
This antenna makes 80 and 160 enjoyable.
Less than $50 to hear Europeans all summer on the LF bands seems
like a good deal if you have the space.
When the antenna broke this summer, I used a split bolt connector to
join the two pieces back together. You can find these for about $1 in
the electrical aisle of the Home Depot (or hardware store). No solder
required!
Randy Thompson, K5ZD
k5zd@iconics.com"
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----------
>From: ke1fo
>To: TopBand Reflector
>Subject: TopBand: Electric fence wire for Beverages?
To: <topband@contesting.com>
>Date: Wednesday, December 18, 1996 5:25PM
>
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>Message-ID: <32B8290A.2578@contesting.com>
To: <topband@contesting.com>
>Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 17:25:30 +0000
>From: "Alfred J. Frugoli" <ke1fo@contesting.com>
>Reply-To: <ke1fo@contesting.com>
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>To: TopBand Reflector <topband@contesting.com>
>Subject: TopBand: Electric fence wire for Beverages?
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>----------------------------------------------------
>I know I've seen this discussed before, but here goes again. Anybody
>have experience using electric fence wire for Beverages? Thanks.
>--
>Al, KE1FO, ex. KE6BER mailto:ke1fo@contesting.com or ke6ber@tiac.net
>Check out my web page, http://www.tiac.net/users/ke6ber for summaries
>from the contest reflector and a growing list of amateur radio links.
>
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