Topband: Beverage construction

[Donald Chester]

Thu Nov 23 13:42:27 EST 2017 Dave k4em at bellsouth.net wrote:
>  did you slope the last 50' on each end?

Sloping the ends of a beverage serves no useful purpose.  That's an old wives' tale (or maybe I should say old Hammy Hambone's tale) started by W1WCR, I believe.  Whether the wire is horizontal all the way to eacd end  with a vertical lead straight down to the ground point, or 50' of sloping the wire at each end, you have exactly the same vertical and horizontal component of wire.  Precisely why a Pennant antenna and a Flag antenna of the same total height and length perform approximately the same.  The only advantage to the sloping wire is that the sloping antenna itself acts as a guy wire for the end poles, eliminating the need to terminate each end of the antenna with a separate guy wire.  But the long gradual slope makes the antenna wire more hazardous to surface traffic than a short guy wire at each pole.

Don k4kyv