Beverages under snow, verticals amongst trees, etc.

[WmHein at aol.com]

I have been reading the new ON4UN "Low Band DXing" book.  An outstanding
work, the book has got me rebuilding some of my low band antennas.  But
before I get too far...

(1)  "Low Band DXing" suggests that Beverage antennas installed low to the
ground (1 to 3 feet) have superior patterns to Beverage antennas installed at
the "usual" heights, 10 to 15 feet.  Question:  will such antennas still work
properly if they are covered by a couple feet of snow?

(2)  How much will the performance of a Beverage antenna installed in a
forest suffer vis-a-vis an equivalent antenna installed in an open field?

(3)  And speaking of trees, will the performance of HF verticals surrounded
by heavy foliage suffer vis-a-vis similar antennas in open fields?

(4)  Due to poor Rocky Mountain ground, I have been experimenting with
terminating Beverage antennas (installed 10 to 15 feet above ground) with a
single 160m quarter wave radial (installed at the same height and in the same
direction as the main Beverage wire).  I installed a temporary potentiometer
at the termination point and have been adjusting for best F/B pattern.
 Surprisingly, the best F/B reading (about 3 and 1/2 S units better than no
termination) is realized at over 900 ohms.  Does this sound right?  Am I
doing something wrong?

Please send comments direct to wmhein at aol.com.  I will summarize and post
comments on this reflector.

Bill AA6TT
Tiffany, Colorado
wmhein at aol.com



>From Trey Garlough <GARLOUGH at TGV.COM>  Sun Sep 11 17:55:52 1994
From: Trey Garlough <GARLOUGH at TGV.COM> (Trey Garlough)
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 09:55:52 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: AB6FO CW Sprint Score
Message-ID: <779302552.631399.GARLOUGH at TGV.COM>

> By the way, why are there multipliers in the Sprint. I should be a straight 
> QSO count contest. Multipliers are purely serendipidous, you can't chase them
> or anything in the Sprint.

Good question.  I think having a multiplier-like thing is a good randomizing
factor.  A number of times I have suggested that we use states as "adders"
rather than "multipliers," i.e. your score of 245 X 40 = 9,800 would really
be 245 + 40 = 285.  I'm not suggesting this makes the contest more *fair*, 
just more "sprint"-like.

--Trey, WN4KKN/6

>From oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills)  Sun Sep 11 18:19:29 1994
From: oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills) (Derek Wills)
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 94 12:19:29 CDT
Subject: AB6FO CW Sprint Score
Message-ID: <9409111719.AA10613 at astro.as.utexas.edu>

	By the way, why are there multipliers in the Sprint. I should be a 
        straight QSO count contest. Multipliers are purely serendipidous, 
        you can't chase them or anything in the Sprint.  [AB6FO]

It's to make the small guys feel even smaller.  The more Qs you make,
the more mults you stumble across, so someone who makes 50% more Qs
than I do probably hits 25% more mults and their score is therefore 
getting on for twice mine (87.5% higher for purists).

You can chase them to some extent - if you hear someone starting to
work WB0O and you still need ND, it's worth hanging around for the
whole exchange and jumping on him, rather than CQing somewhere else.

Not that I can give anyone advice with my score (215 x too-depressed-
to-add-them-up-right-now).

Derek AA5BT, G3NMX
oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu