Topband: Changing Beverage impedance in cold WX

[VE6WZ_Steve]

Over the years I have noticed my Beverage feed impedance will change during the winter.
My station is configured to take analyzer sweeps in the shack of any of my 12 Beverage wires.  All 12 wires show the same change in impedance compared to the summer.

Two days ago I did some experiments to see if this was because the frozen ground was limiting conductivity. In wet soil with the associated minerals and salts, the ionic transfer contributes to conductivity, just like salt water.  When the ground is frozen solid, like a block of ice, it seems possible that this ionic conduction could be diminished.

To test my theory, I add some radials to both the feed and termination and rescan the Beverage.
Join me on the adventure to see how it worked out in this video as I brave the -38 C winter cold.  I also show some calculations of the effect of cold weather on Beverage wire conductivity and the termination resistor.  This is perhaps the most interesting, because the term resistors I use are ceramic units which have a significant negative temperature coefficient.  I experiment to confirm the changes in resistance with temperature.

YouTube vid here: https://youtu.be/0XevB7wLInE <https://youtu.be/0XevB7wLInE>

73, de steve ve6wz