[TowerTalk] Beverage vs what?

[John Langdon]

Pete I have room for 580' beverages, one on EU and one on JA.  They barely
fit on the property, and I have to "zig-zag" around a couple of obstacles to
run them.  I cannot do similar runs for the SE or SW directions.  For 80m I
have a two element linear loaded yagi (Force 12 280C) and on 160 I have a
full sized sloper in a "lazy V" configuration like 1/4 of a K3LR array.

There are definitely times when signals on 160 and 80 are much better on the
beverage than on either transmit antenna.  There are also times that the
transmit antennas are better.  I am trying to get my act together to put up
the other three slopers for a full K3LR style array but the supports are a
problem right now.  If I had such an array perhaps it would be better than
the beverage much more often than the single sloper. There are several QSO's
I have made that were Q5 on the beverages and Q1 or less on the other
antennas, and there would have been no QSO without the beverage.  It has
made me wish for beverages in other directions, too.  I have had no luck at
all with un-terminated beverages or the two-wire variety.  I am over very
rocky low conductivity soil and the beverages slope down with the terrain
from the feed point to the termination about 40' over the 580' length.  When
I remove the terminating resistors I seem to get a very poor omni antenna,
not a two-lobed pattern, as you would expect.  I tried one two wire and it
was a big disappointment compared to the simple terminated beverage.

When we have thunderstorms during a contest, I can get back on the air
sooner by using the beverages for receive, while the QRN is still impossible
loud on the transmit antennas.  I also get a lot of use of the beverages on
20-15-10.  They are super directive and on one occasion I was able to
continue running JA's on 20 by listening on the beverage even when a big gun
on the East Coast made a 20 minute try at taking over the frequency.   The
JA beverage also will sometimes hear JA's on 10M that the stacked tribanders
do not, but that is kind of a freak think that I do not fully understand.  I
think you will find the short beverage worth the effort for 80-10, and if
you can get any use out of them on 160 it is a bonus.  My advice is to give
it a try in whatever directions you can.

I would like to hear from someone who has tried the Titanex 160SES or 80SES
receive antennas, especially in comparison to a beverage.

BTW On 160 there are definitely "vertical nights" and "horizontal nights"
and I can never predict in advance what will be what.

73 John N5CQ



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-towertalk@contesting.com
[mailto:owner-towertalk@contesting.com]On Behalf Of Pete Smith
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2000 12:34 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Beverage vs what?


Even though I have 5 acres of land to work with, the shape of the property
is such that the longest Beverages I can install, aimed at either Europe or
North Asia, are less than 300 ft long.  My reading suggests that this is
probably too short for 80 meters, and certainly for 160.  With that in
mind, I'm looking at alternatives.

My current transmit antenna on 80 is a 4-element K3LR-style parasitic
array, whose pattern closely resembles a 4-square.  The probem is that the
patterns of a short beverage, a EWE and a K9AY loop look just about the
same as that of my transmit antenna.  Gain aside, I'm wondering if I can
expect any better signal to noise performance from them than I now get
listening on the transmit antenna.

There are some anecdotes suggesting that a Beverage works better than its
pattern would suggest because it discriminates against vertically-polarized
energy, which my transmit antenna clearly does not.  Anything to this?  I
found no discussion of this phenomenon (?) in ON4UN's book.

Finally, if a Beverage really is meaningfully better, has anyone compared a
traditional Beverage of the right length to a helical "Slinky" Beverage?

73,  Pete N4ZR

Don't forget to update your entry in the World Contest Station Database
http://206.102.70.3/search.htm


--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html
Submissions:              towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-towertalk@contesting.com
Search:                   http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm


--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html
Submissions:              towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-towertalk@contesting.com
Search:                   http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm