Topband: Another beverage success story

[Tree]

Just before the CQ WW CW contest, I put up a new beverage with some help 
from the plaquemeister himself (W7EW).  The antenna is about 750 feet 
long - over flat ground (fairly good ground with lots of horse fertilizer) 
and running 60 / 240 degrees.  This was a comprimise between visibility 
to the wife (aka "Beverage Cutter") and being pointed roughly in the 
direction of European and African signals.  The height runs from about 
8 - 12 feet - as it only has three supports - two at each end and one
roughly in the middle.  It runs sort of as a diagonal across a rectangular
horse pasture which has a wire fence around its perimeter.

During the CQ WW CW, the antenna was very useful for many of my QSOs
compared to the 4 square.  

On 160, it was quieter than the TX antenna (a single vertical) most of
the time - even when listening to stations from the west.

This weekend, I modified it to make it reversible.  It isn't the two wire
method - but rather a brute force technique that uses 900 feet of RG58 to
run along the fence line to get to the other end of the antenna - and some
fancy switching with relays so I could feed +12V down the feedline to 
switch directions (I can draw this up if anyone is interested).

Why not use two wires?  That would increase the visiblity by at least 3
db, and increase the risk of the beverage cutter finding it.

Listening to WWV/WWVH on 2.5 MHz and 5 MHz indicated that the array does 
indeed have some F/B.  I do notice the 6 or 7 db of attenuation from the 
RG58, but WWVH was much better in the west direction.  Also, the ZL 
beacons and HS72B this morning could only be heard in the west direction.

I will probably replace the RG58 with hardline at some point.

As W8JI says - it is hard to beat a beverage for how simple it is and
how well it works.  I am using 560 Ohms for my terminations, but might
try some different values now that I have a better way to measure F/B.

I will have to take this down in the Spring and put it back up in the 
fall - so the beverage cutter won't get to it - but I can live with that.

73 Tree N6TR
tree at kkn.net