Topband: Beverage on Ice

[Ron Feutz]

I did this about 10 years ago.  I live on the Wisconsin River and it's about 
a half-mile wide in front of the house.

I laid out 1000' of #14 stranded, insulated wire.  I terminated it with a 
200 ohm resistor to a 1/4 wave wire and several short radials running nearly 
parallel to the antenna/grounding wires.  At the feed end, I used a 4/1 
homebrew transformer using one of "Tom's" binocular cores.  The transformer 
was grounded to a conventional 8' ground rod.

The antenna never worked at all, as far as I could tell.  There was no 
discernable, certainly not usable, directivity.  Why, I don't have a clue. 
The techniques chosen were the result of all the best advice I could get at 
the time on the topband reflector.

FWIW, the river averages about 10-15 feet deep under the antenna and is 
sand/gravel/bedrock.   I would love to try this again if someone can help 
with an improved design.

73,

Ron KK9K


-----Original Message----- 
From: Roger Parsons via Topband
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 3:51 PM
To: Topband
Subject: Topband: Beverage on Ice

I know that Beverages on Ground have been discussed on a number of 
occasions, but:

I live on the shores of a reasonably large lake, and at this time of year it 
will be frozen to at least 2' and possibly 4' or 5' deep. I believe that ice 
is a pretty good insulator, so I wonder about the effectiveness of a wire 
just laid on the surface? It would be impossible to retrieve the wire in the 
spring so it would have to be fine enameled copper. Even that may not be 
very environmentally friendly? If the wire survived the first couple of days 
it would be frozen into the ice - it would be at risk from snow machines 
until that happened.

This is just speculation from enforced idleness - I cleverly managed to 
break my leg during a foolish last check of my receive antennas before 
Christmas - so I can't even get into the shack, let alone onto the lake. I 
was not very hopeful in any event that EP6T would be workable from here, but 
I am determined somehow to get there for K1N...

73 Roger
VE3ZI
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