Topband: beverage antennas

[Bruce Lallathin]

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At 08:01 PM 8/22/99 -0700, you wrote:

>My antenna farms consists of 22 acres in hilly (some say mountainous) terrain.
>Does anyone have any experience or advice on Beverages that go up and down
>hills, perhaps several times over their length?
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Hi Barry,

I have a very similar situation here and struggled for several years with this.


I tried making the wires follow the terrain, which worked fairly well for both
two wire and standard terminated Beverages. Finally I installed new ones, eight
of them and made them as straight as possible and they worked much much better.
Mine are about 1200' long. Some of the PVC supports (slipped over three corner
metal fence posts) are 15-18' tall, some only 7-10' tall now. The wires are as
straight as I can get them and in places are nearly 25' above ground. 

For my money, make em straight. Also, the extra height increases signal
recovery some and I don't have to worry as much about the deer or snowmobilers
knocking them down. The ends slope down to about 10" above ground over about
75' at each end. 

See ON4UN Low Band DXing Handbook....Mine are pretty similar and they
definately seem to work well. 

On the other hand, any Beverage is better than none. 

I use 17 guage electric fence wire. It gets replaced about every two to three
years and is very inexpensive and strong. A major ice storm here in March of
'97 destroyed nearly every antenna here but all of the Beverages survived
undamaged. 

Now if I could silver plate the stuff that would be neat. It might not work all
that much better but it is an intriguing idea. Some swear by copper or
copperweld wires. I never could afford to use anything but the fence wire and
for the money it seems to be a good choice.

You might get some ideas from viewing my installations on the Mad River Radio
Club web site where my station pix are posted. <http://www.qsl.net/mrrc> 

One thing for sure, operating the low bands with Beverage antennas is much more
enjoyable and worth the effort to install and maintain them.

Hope this helps. 

73,
Bruce
AA8Ugly





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