Charles, I think you got a 800 ft wire, not a beverage...
My experiences with my four beverages has been similar to Barry's
in that they work well, very well.
The first year I put them up, I terminated the beverages with 470
ohm 1/2 watt resistors. Found out that 1/2 watt resistors were
knocked out very soon by static. This year I installed 1000 ohm
2 watt resistors in parallel to try to improve the lightning situation.
(so far so good)
Most of the time my beverages seem as, (or more) directional on 160,
80 & 40 than my yagis do on 20 and 15. But they really shine by
pulling the weak low angle signals out of the noise on 160 and 80.
Two of the four beverages are in heavy woods, two are in open field.
The ones in the woods seem to work very well.
Charles, if you can't tell a big difference in the noise from your
transmit antenna and your beverage, (when listening to a weak dx
signal in the lobe)... you got problems.
If you are using a (working) matching transformer between the
beverage and your receiver, even if you don't terminate it,
it should show an improvement, lower noise level as well as
show some directivity toward the ends.
I recommend the ICE model 180/181 type matching units. I also
recommend you walk any beverage about once a month, especially
in woods...Squirrels love to eat my plastic electric fence
insulators.
Many times I find a limb has fallen on the beverage with out my
noticing any degradation of it's performance. My beverages are
sloped at the ends to ground stakes about four inches above ground.
I have not felt the need to use a pre-amp.
I am able to terminate all four beverages to a single head end point
where a Ameritron RCS-4 switch is used to select each beverage.One coax
is run back to the shack, with the Coax just laying on the ground.
I can truthfully say I never believed when I put the beverages up that
they would work as well as they do and be so simple.
Hope this helps...oh yes, I find that eight to 10 feet off the ground
is best.
73 Charles, hope you get that wire acting like a beverage real soon.
PS If you leave an 800 ft beverage connected to your receiver and a
thunder storm shows up ...your receiver may not work when the clouds
go away..protect your gear with proper static drain and MOV's or gas
tubes...beverages love static...just a word to the wise...
At 10:38 AM 10/23/97 +0000, you wrote:
>On 23 Oct 97, Charles H. Harpole <harpole@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu> wrote:
>
>> My 800foot unterminated Beverage hears practically nothing. Going out
>> with a gnd rod and resistor soon. More news later. K4VUD
>>
>>
>I don't think that's your problem. I have a 600 ft Bev at EU that works
>very well. Before the summer, at my annual taking it down
>for the farmer, I noticed that the termination connection had opened
>up. I'm not sure when, but it didn't have much effect on its
>performance.
>73 Barry
>
>--
>Barry Kutner, W2UP Internet: w2up@itw.com
>Newtown, PA Frankford Radio Club
>
>
>
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