In the '90s at a previous QTH north of Wilmington, Del., I tried a 130 foot
"Beverage" just one foot above the ground, in the bottom of a V-shaped drainage
ditch about 10 feet deep, aimed toward Europe. I used a preamp at the feedpoint
using a pair of MPF102 FETs.
I also had a 600-foot single-wire Beverage, 10 feet high, aimed at Europe.
About 10 percent of the time the shortie was better, presumably when high-angle
signals were dominating on the path. Maybe the ditch helped provide some
shielding too from nearby noise sources -- this was in a fairly dense suburban
environment.
Sometimes I had them hooked to two separate receivers, with one going into each
ear, and at times the signals would flip-flop between the two very quickly.
In the '80s at my QTH near Bear, Del., I had a 185-foot Beverage 10 feet high,
aimed at Europe. It ran about 50 feet from my 100-ft. shunt-fed tower, and the
coupling often enhanced signals on the short Beverage. During times of high
precipitation static, however, the noise coupled from the tower was
overwhelming, and I had to detune the tower to make the Beverage useful. Later
when I added a 600-foot Beverage about a half mile away in some woods, that was
almost always better than the short Beverage. But the short Beverage was almost
always better than listening on the vertical. The short Beverage aimed at
Europe also was almost always better than any of the longer Beverages I had in
other directions -- exceptions being perceived as when signals were skewed from
the East or Southeast occasionally. I also had a small closed RX loop and the
short Beverage was almost always better than that.
All of the above mentioned Beverages were terminated.
So bottom line, if you only have room for a short Beverage it is worth trying
-- maybe even in addition to a long Beverage or loops.
73/Jon AA1K
Felton, Delaware
www.aa1k.us
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