I want to mention that the antenna has been the best for its length at my
QTH. It behaves more like transmission line in that sags and irregularities
show up as bumps when sweeping it out from 1.8 to 28 MHZ. The height above
ground is just below my knee. This requires many more short support post to
maintain a reasonable consistent height along its path.
It worked great last winter, even when under snow. I had reduced it from
about 4 feet last fall (2006) to the below knee cap un-calibrated height.
The deer stopped knocking it down and from tracks apparently were stepping
over. There are apple trees with tasty apples very close.
I used it for 160 meter contacts at European sunrise times occasionally
through the summer. Then the need for a 10 meter dipole antenna arose so I
could call into the local 10-10 net. While walking a rope support line to a
choice tree, I tripped over something that turned out to be the Beverage
antenna. It was totally immersed in tall weeds. I started thinking, How will
it ever survive apple season? I worked Robin on our 80 meter long path
schedule and mentioned the problem. He suggested that I use Round-UP weed
killer. This was tried and later after pulling up some of the dead stocks
the Beverage path was well defined to sight.
I noticed that the neighborhood cats were using it for a run-way, and now
that apple season is here, the deer tracks along it are numerous As of this
writing, no wire breakage has occurred.
The termination resistance, and the Beverage transformer impedance for my
northern latitude location is 330 ohms. I use the minimum VSWR variance 1.8
to 30 MHZ method.
I do use a preamplifier as the output is a little low, but not as low as a
BOG antenna. Someone in a previous post said that the most gain improvement
is in the first inch off the ground. I found that BOG antennas similar to
radials laid on the ground disappear under ground in about one year +-.
I highly recommend a low to the ground Beverage antenna if you have local
conditions that will allow one.
73
Bruce-K1FZ
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