Topband: beverage lobes

[Larry Molitor]

Rick Karlquist <richard at karlquist.com> wrote:

The skew issue has discouraged me from trying to set up a "killer"
European beverage, because out here on the left coast, Eu is often
skewed.Skew is not a problem for me. 

When I was in AZ I never once heard a skewed signal. It wasn't that there weren't any but that skewed signals are always much weaker than "straight path" signals and they were never loud enough for me to hear through my incredible high noise level.

When I moved to WA, I worried about skew path because all the conventional wisdom said skew was common. I wasted a lot of time putting up Beverages pointing the wrong way because of that.

With good Bev's up every 30 degrees it was possible to hear the skewed signals and even tell how much skew there was. It turns out that the skew path is so very much weaker for me that even when I can hear the EU's on skew I cannot work them.

The dominant path to EU here in central WA (over the last three years anyway) is right over the pole or at least within 30 degrees of it. If I don't hear them on the 30° Bev, I don't bother calling any more. 

Another interesting tidbit is the morning European opening. I had lot of experts tell me what direction to put my antenna facing. All agreed that due north was a waste of time. I lost one whole season of morning openings due to that faulty advice. When I hear EU in my morning, they are always coming in from north or a bit east of north. N7UA, about 150 miles west of me in the middle of Puget Sound, hears them from the northwest while I'm hearing them from the north.

The only solution I see is to put up GOOD RX antennas in every direction and use them all!

73,

Larry - W7IUV
DN07dg - central WA
http://w7iuv.com

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com