Topband: Beverage length

[Joe]

Thanks Drew,

I thought for some reason it was behaving like a dipole. At short 
lengths more boradside to the antenna and as it gets longer the lobe 
gets smaller and more pointing towards the end of the wire.

Now, a BOG.

if you do NOT terminate it, does it behave like a Rohmbic where it's Bi 
directional?

BOG does the wire need to be insulated? or can it be bare/

Joe
WB9SBD
On 8/1/2019 2:27 PM, Drew Vonada-Smith wrote:
> 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
>
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