Topband: Beverages over Radials

[Herb Schoenbohm]

Clive,  I ran a long beverage over a salt pond (brackish water with high 
salt content) near my QTH and its performance was not good until I ran 
the same wire over earth.  Another attempt was to use the top strand of 
an electric fence no longer in use.  I also ran for 1500 feet straight 
west and the other two barbed wires were spaced below and  grounded to 
the metal fence posts very 20 feet. I expected a winner and was very 
disappointed.  Again the performance was lackluster.  A 500 foot 3 foot 
high Beverage over the hay field next to my house running in the same 
direction beat it hands down.  All systems were terminated with a 500 
ohm resistor and a ground rod with a few short radials.

I tired to chime in recently on the two wire vertical spaced Beverage 
thread but the experts said I  was wrong when I suggested it would be 
better ot space two wire Beverages apart horizontally, based on 
experience with a good conductor beneath a Beverage.  But then again the 
bottom wire of the suggested two wire antenna was part of the system and 
presumably not grounded except at the termination or through the 
matching transformer.  That may make a big difference.  But as I 
mentioned in an earlier post that everything I have ever read about the 
classic Beverage is that in order to develop a wave tilt and significant 
pattern shaping with nulls, the conductivity beneath the Beverage wire 
"must" be inferior to the wire above itself.  By traveling faster in the 
wire than the earth below the signal is enhanced according to Mr. 
Beverage himself.

I will probably get flamed for saying this but I just look at the cards 
that are dealt to me and this is what I see.

73

Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ

Clive GM3POI wrote:

>I'm not sure whether this subject has been aired before, but given that a
>Beverage needs ideally to run over lossy ground. Is it the collective wisdom
>that a Beverage running for a large percentage of it's length over a radial
>field won't work as well. That is for the moment Ignoring  coupling to the
>Tx antenna. Has anyone proved this to be the case. 73 Clive GM3POI
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