Topband: Rack mounted beverage doesn't work well!

[W0AH@aol.com]

Topbanders:
     Oh, you mean it has to be stretched out in a straight line?  Tell that 
to our frequent guest.
Anyway, all the talk of beverage lengths, beverages over fences, and 
signal-to-noise ratios brings me to this.
Two nights ago, a sixteen-pointer buck took down my NE European beverage 
again!   My wife and I saw him approaching our property at sunset as we were 
returning from town.   
     Over it's 740', the NE beverage sags in a few places down to 5', and the 
buck found one of them!  I keep putting higher supporting structures in to 
support the beverage, and the darn deer keeps growing a bigger rack!
      I am still trying to find the correct terminating resistance for good 
F/B on the NE, east, and west beverages.  ON4UN uses 470 ohms with just a 2' 
ground rod, but I suspect he has better conducting soil than our clay and 
rock here near the base of Pikes Peak, so I have recently put slightly better 
3' terminating ground rods in and poored some salt water solution around the 
ground rod.   Does that help?   Hope the deer and elk don't think it's a salt 
lick!
      What terminating resistance are others using in what type of soil and 
with what kind of terminating ground rod?   And with waht results?
      Conditions haven't improved the past two weeks.  In fact, I think they 
were better in late August.  We still have S9+ QRN every night.   The VK's 
have good signals in the AM, near our sunrise, and I have heard  a couple of 
JA's, but unhappily, they seemed to get on after our sunrise as signals were 
disappearing.  
      My Titan has problems so I am only running  500-600 watts presently 
(single 3-500Z) with an old Heathkit SB-1000 that likes to arc over on 160M 
and 80M at higher powers.
Doug  W0AH



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