Topband: Beverage Ground

[Eric Gustafson]

Hi Bill,

If you are talking about a single 1/4 wave piece of wire, it is
best if it is in alignment with the rest of the beverage.  This
is no real sacrifice as the apparent length of the beverage will
be the length to the far end of the 1/4 wave wire termination.

But with two 1/4 wave wires as termination, there are other
possibilities.  You could run them from the "cold" end of the
resistor in direct opposition to one another perpendicular to the
beverage wire for some distance and then bring them back towards
the feedpoint for some distance, then back towards the beverage
wire for some distance, etc.  So long as everything is done
symmetrically to both wires.  Sort of like:

                      /--------------\
                      |              |
                      |              |
                      |      |       |
                      |      |       |
                      \------/       |
                                     |
FP---Beverage--Wire--------------RRRR*
                                     |
                      /------\       |
                      |      |       |
                      |      |       |
                      |              |
                      |              |
                      \--------------/                                     

You could probably even bring the vertical (in this ASCII picture
frame) part of the folded wire across the beverage wire if you
wanted to so long as they don't touch and are really
perpendicular where they cross.  You could check for ground wire
resonance with a grid dipper coupled in near the resistor
connection point (with the beverage wire disconnected).

I hope that ASCII picture makes it through the mail systems OK.

73, Eric  N7CL




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