Topband: Finding break in Beverage wire

[Tom Rauch]

> wire's been up for 18 mos and been subject to a fair amount of stretching,
> falling branches, etc. and already has a few splices in it.

The suggestion of using a radio is a good one. Here's another way.

An MFJ-259 will locate the break if you connect the 259 at the 
matching transformer to the beverage and use the "distance to fault"
mode.

If you don't have a 259, you can tune something else for impedance 
dips as you sweep up in frequency. Take the frequency difference 
of the any two adjacent dips, and that is the half-wave frequency of 
the "good" section of wire back to the transformer. Let the 
frequency difference between repeating dips be F.

Using 492/F, you will get the distance to the open or short 
(assuming freespace Vp). 

The only drawback is you need to measure at the antenna 
feedpoint (through the transformer is OK) and the testing device 
has to cover a wide frequency range.
 
73, Tom W8JI
w8ji@contesting.com


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