Topband: My beverage only hears static?

[Mike Waters]

Hi Terry,

Is there a reason why you're pointing north? That's the wrong direction for
Aruba, especially with the very narrow beamwidth it has on 20m! :-)

On my Beverage antenna page at
www.w0btu.com/Beverage_antennas.html near the bottom, is an explanation of
where we should point our Beverages. I now use DX Atlas, which is perfect
for showing what direction the other station is.

Some tips:

Pour a hot, concentrated solution of Epsom Salts around any
freshly-driven-in ground rod (see the above web site). Later, add some
short radials (also see the website).

Generally, north is seldom a good direction, especially because from Oregon
you're pointing over the area where the least bit of Auroral activity can
ruin your reception.

If you terminate it, the signals and noise off the back of your Beverage
will drop by about 20 dB.

There's lots of folks here that can help you, that know more than I do
about Beverages.

73, Mike
www.w0btu.com

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 2:44 PM, terry burge <ki7m at comcast.net> wrote:

> I put up my first beverage recently. It's about 550-600 feet of 17 gauge
> electric fence wire running to the north about 6-7 feet high. Not
> terminated right now but using a beverage transformer I purchased on
> qth.com and have not put on the termination yet. Using a 5' galvanized
> ground rod at the transformer and 75 ohm RG-6 surplus I got about 35 feet
> to my K-3 Elecraft thru an Array Solutions frontend protector to the RX
> antenna connection.
>
> All I get is S-5 static on the beverage. Even the strong stations barely
> make a ripple of noise. Is this right?
>
> I added some clamp on ferrites to see if the Common Mode Noise would be
> cut down but after putting 5 on the RG-6 coax there is no difference. Just
> that S-5 static level on any band 80/40/20/etc. Right now I'm listening to
> P49MR on 14.250.0 Mhz and his 57 signal does not even come thru on the
> beverage when I switch to RX antenna?
>