Topband: Some experiments with a short beverage, not succeeding very well

[Fred Moeves]

Mark,
I'm no expert and relatively new to the Beverage antenna but have done 
lots of experimenting with them.
My thoughts....

First don't give up short Beverages work just fine...you just work with 
with you have.
I would try to use good rg6 one piece no splice...you should not have to 
use a preamp.
Put 450 ohm resistor on the antenna.

Also test the transformer with the 450 ohm resistor.
Antenna analyzer will check the antenna.


Few years ago I put up a 580' wire to the south unterminated ..I left it 
up for a year.
It worked really good for me and opened my eyes to the rx antenna.
The next year I put a 480 ohm resistor on it and it really played good.

After that I put a north Beverage at 300' it worked very good.

So now I changed things around a little.
South Beverage is 350' Nice and straight and this one works real good 
f/b seems good too.
West Beverage is 250' nice and straight and works good but the f/b is 
not the best.

The the north Beverage is now 450' but has a bow in it...so I call it 
the "Oxbow Beverage" it starts at abt 40 degs and bends to the south to 
abt 200 degs.
This one the output is down but still works...this is also my longest 
run of rg 6 cable.
I am troubleshooting this antenna now..

Good links ...lots of good ones but I have been to these abt a million 
times.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181115070846/http://www.w0btu.com/Beverage_antennas.html
http://www.w8ji.com/beverages.htm
ps://www.youtube.com/user/ve6wz/videos

Anyway keep us posted and good luck.

Fred KB4QZH

On 6/30/2020 2:56 PM, Mark Lunday wrote:
> "Beverages just want to work" is what I have heard.
>
> Not having much luck with that here.  I suspect operator/installation error.
>
> I did a lot of reading and I must be doing something wrong.
>
>
>
>    *   250 feet of insulated wire strung out in 030 degrees direction toward EU, pretty straight, varying in height from 4 to 6 feet, running through thick brush with no metal objects or artificial elements along the run.
>    *   9:1 transformer at feed point with ground rod
>    *   300 feet of coax, mix of RG-8, MMR-400 to get to the edge of the woods from the house
>    *   No terminating resistor
>
> On bands 160-40, the signals are very weak. I am monitoring WSPR, FT8.   I can hear signals on 160-40 but they are way down compared to dipoles and inverted L on the same bands. Like 20-30 db down. From what I read, I should NOT need an HF pre-amplifier, right?
>
> Signals on 30 and 20 seem to be better and I can copy some DX from EU on FT8.
>
> I will try installing a new ground rod, the old one is 10 years old and perhaps not making a good ground connection at the feedpoint.   The transformer is brand new, so that's not an issue.  The coax has tested out fine.  Soil is central North Carolina clay, a bit dry at this time.
>
> I am guessing performance is poor on 160-40 because of the short length and that it's bi-directional (no terminating resistor), which I am seeing on 30 meters. But I did not think it would be THIS bad on 160-40....
>
> Mark Lunday, WD4ELG
> Greensboro, NC  FM06be
> wd4elg at arrl.net<mailto:wd4elg at arrl.net>
> http://wd4elg.blogspot.com
> SKCC #16439  FISTS #17972  QRP ARCI #16497
>
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