Topband: Beverage termination

[Hal Kennedy]

Greetings - Im new to the reflector and relatively new to 160..but an EE and 
active ham for 40 years.  I believe I have a novel concept for terminating 
beverages...but before I offer it up, Id like a little feedback on the 
current state of termination discussions, regarding the vertical wire vs. 
sloped wire configurations. (Thereby possibly avoiding looking like a 
complete idiot!)

As I understand it, there is a viewpoint that the vertical wire terminatons 
(this discussion applies to both ends) are a significant enough part of the 
antenna that they will degrade F/B and pattern.  This effect being more 
significant as one goes up in frequency.  I have done a fair amount of 
modeling with EZNEC, which supports this view -- as does ON4UN's book. The 
'answer' to this view being the sloping of the last 50 feet or so of the 
beverage, providing a low angle termination that has negligible pick-up in 
the vertical plane.  Sloping terminations are, however, not deer and people 
friendly ways to end the antenna.

I think there is an alternate viewpoint that it doesn't matter much, or 
maybe not at all, on 160M, where the vertical wire at around 9 feet of 
height does not introduce enough signal into the antenna to matter.
Does this pretty well sum up 'conventional wisdom?'

Hal N4GG



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