Topband: Beverage length

Drew Vonada-Smith drew at whisperingwoods.org
Thu Aug 1 15:27:15 EDT 2019


Joe,


For a simple Beverage, you just point the antenna (unfed end) at the target.  For length, "longer is better" is approximately true, but the ideal lengths are about 1 to 2 wavelengths.  Much longer than that, and phased shorter Beverages work better.  Much shorter than that, and you might as well use some other type of RX antenna.  One Bev can work pretty well on both 160 and 80, and will occasionally be useful on other bands also.  During spring/summer precip static, common in KS, the Bev is often my only usable RX antenna on ANY HF band!


A Beverage has negative gain.  But you don't care about absolute strength, you only care about S/N, as any modern radio has enough gain on 160M for the smallish Beverage signal to be fine.  Some, like me, use a preamp just so the various RX antenna gains are approximately equal when switching between them.  A 15 dB preamp brings my 600 ft Bev signal strengths to the level of my TX Inv-L on 160.  But you don't need it.


Beverages are not in the great favor they once were, mostly due to the advent of excellent vertical arrays.  But they still have the big advantage of being the simplest RX antenna one can imagine, that nearly always works as described without difficulty, assuming you have the space.  And cheap!


Reversible Beverages are only slightly more complicated and give you another direction with no more space required.  Lots of good articles out there for a Google.


73,

Drew K3PA


________________________________

------------------------------

Message: 18
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 13:25:25 -0500
From: Joe <nss at mwt.net>
To: Wes <wes_n7ws at triconet.org>, topband at contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: BOG height
Message-ID: <cb0a992a-8c3a-ebf7-6925-180fae8c0dba at mwt.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

beverages have always fascinated me. But I have never had the property
to have one.

I might now, BUT, how do you know how long and what direction to lay it
out to maximize signal to the desired direction?

I assume the longer it is, the higher gain it has and more towards the
ends the lobe is?

Joe WB9SBD



More information about the Topband mailing list