Topband: Do short beverages "work"?

[Bob Eldridge]

Hi Rick
It depends what you mean by "really short".  Some consider a half wave
to be really short.  Beverage Rice and Kellogg original AIEE paper
showed that there is not much difference in the pattern of a half wave
and a full wave, but considerable difference when you go to 2 wave.
They considered the half wave to be working as a Wave antenna, and for
sure the ones I have used (6 ft or so above ground) had useful
directivity on 160.
73
Bob VE7BS
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rick Karlquist" <richard at karlquist.com>
To: "K4RO Kirk Pickering" <k4ro at k4ro.net>
Cc: <topband at contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 7:39 AM
Subject: Topband: Do short beverages "work"?

> I have been reading these testimonials about how well short
> beverages work.  It depends on what you mean by "work".
> They might be useful antennas, but whether they are
> functioning as beverages is another matter.  At least
> at my QTH, a low (30 feet high) dipole is usually a better
> receive antenna that a vertical.  A low dipole is omnidirectional
> as far as I can tell.  A beverage that is working as a beverage
> will exhibit very noticeable nulls.  It would be interesting
> to see if really short beverages exhibit these nulls.  Otherwise,
> useful as they may be, they are acting a degenerate low dipoles,
> but still beat listening on the transmit antenna.
>
> Rick N6RK
>
> _______________________________________________
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