Topband: Bev wire under a path?

[W2RU - Bud Hippisley]

My Northwest Beverage does exactly what you are proposing.  It crosses a shared gravel driveway that leads to my home.  Fortunately, there are small trees on each side of the driveway (in fact, they hold up segments of the Beverage), so I simply ran my Beverage wire down one tree, across the driveway in a trench a few inches deep, and back up the tree on the other side.

I recommend strongly — especially if the ground ever freezes at your QTH — that you put the underground portion of the Beverage wire in a length of PVC tubing and leave a little slack in that portion of the wire.  Along with some of our neighbours on this same driveway, we learned the hard way a few years ago that even direct burial power lines *break* due to the repeated stresses caused by vehicular traffic and frost heaves in the area of the wires if some form of rigid conduit isn't used. 

And the farther down you can place the wire, the less likely it is to gradually work its way back up to the surface over time.

I'm sure there's some signal loss and impedance bumps caused by the earth's proximity, but it's still a whole lot better than not being able to have a NW Beverage at all!

Bud, W2RU


On Jan 6, 2012, at 8:23 AM, Neil G0JHC wrote:

> I currently have  a 585ft Bev, which at around   200ft   has to pass over a
> gravel track which is 12-15ft wide.  I am contemplating...burying the wire  2 or 3 "
> under the gravel track. I am using WD1-a  wire.
> 
> Has anyone any experience of the effect on performance. I will be burying
> approx. 2-3% of its total length.

> Neil G0JHC