Topband: Beverage Below Power Lines

[Charles Bibb]

At 11:49 AM 2/22/2007, Bill Gaines AD8P wrote:

>Has anyone ever installed a beverage below the HV power lines that feed 
>neighborhoods?


Bill,

I can answer part of this, sort of.

When I became active again on topband in late 2004, I built a Beverage for 
Europe (NE). It was 870' long. However, while far far better than the TX 
antenna on receive, it was still too noisy. The first 160' of this antenna 
ran nearly parallel to and as close as 5-10 in spots from the 234V power 
line drop to the house as well as the telephone drop and the cable TV 
drop.  Long story short, I was picking up all sorts of crud from the cable 
TV drop (and probably the others, too). I believe most of the TV junk was 
being radiated from the TV's in the house back along the shield of the drop 
cable. I never was able to clean things up with chokes and filters.

Finally, I decided to just move the feed point of the Beverage, keeping the 
same heading, merely moving further along the wire and "sacrificing" 160' 
of length.  Biggest improvement I ever made in that direction.

Moral of the story: stay as far away from ANY utility wires (or any kind of 
long conductors, for that matter) as you possibly can.

Maybe others have had similar experiences?

Charles - K5ZK