Topband: down hill slope for a beverage

[Charlie Young]

KL7RA wrote:


> During the normal Dayton hallway chatter someone mentioned that a
> beverage running down a hill towards the target area worked better 
> or just as well as his beverage running in a flat field. 
> 
> Anyone else see results like this. A quick review on how beverages
> work doesn't seem to help my suspicion that a downhill slope should
> not help a beverage. I have a lot of down hill slopes I can use if it does 
> work.


Here in WV, I just completed my first topband season.  My beverages (three) all run downslope in the desired direction, and they all seem to work well.  In the west direction, I did some experimenting with running the antennas slightly upslope and slighty downslope. The downslope antenna was by far the best. Unfortunately, the terrain is very irregular and there is no level ground with which to make a comparison to my sloping ground configuration. 

 

I did much more experimenting with TX antennas (inv L's), erecting at least 6 in various spots around the rim of my hilltop. The ground slopes off steeply in all directions, and the best antenna was always the one with the vertical section overlooking the hill slope in the desired working direction. Sometimes I could hear better on the L's than on the beverage, but there were many times when QSO's would not have been possible without the beverages. 

 

The down sloping beverages are not particularly long (350 to 450') but they made it possible to work VQ9, 3B8, EY8, FK8, etc. on 160M.  All told, I managed to work 143 DXCC countries on topband this past season, so the down slope beverages are working. It would be interesting to do a comparison test with a beverage on level ground. Hopefully, someone has done this and will post a response to your question outlining the results. 

 

73, Chas N8RR 

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