Topband: wire on the ground antenna

[Bruce]

Have been experimenting with BOG antennas. They are cranky to get going. 
They have a velocity factor of +- .5
When mine was too long,  I was hearing an LU station and everything else was 
30 db down.  I shortened it twice ending up at .5  it started acting 
somewhat like a Beverage.  If "way too long" the antenna can reverse 
direction.
 It had a strange reactance bump at 4.5 MHZ and  found it was caused by an 
old, in ground, iron water pipe from some bygone era.  Sweeping frequencies 
to get the correct termination, I found that the dew on the grass caused a 
some shift.
Ground conductivity may be a known value, but in some locations it can vary 
along the length of an antenna.

A preamp is a must as the gain is low.

A standard Beverage antenna is a poor transmitting antenna. The on ground 
Beverage would be very poor for transmitting. Talk about ground losses.

Anyone can not have too many receive antennas.  Found I could copy a DX 
station on the BOG with an approaching thunderstorm when there was no copy 
on other antennas that included standard Beverages.

Bruce-K1FZ



 Does the panel think hocus pocus,or is there some truth in the design.