[TowerTalk] Short Beverage??

[sawyered at earthlink.net]

I have a 900 foot beverage to the NE.  Height is 6 - 9 feet above ground.  Terminated to a 600 Ohm Carbon Comp resistor and a 8 foot ground rod.  I use a 9:1 transformer at the end of the wire.  I have a DX Engineering preamp in the shack (used for this and a second beverage to the West).  The coax run is about 200 feet of RG-8.  Typically use my FT-1000MP Mk V.

Here is what I see:

160: Dipole at 70 feet and Vertical T with 24 radials (60 feet of vertical wire).  Beverage without preamp typically hears EU at S0 - S7 but noise is anywhere from receiver noise limited to S3 - S5.  I typically see about a 3 - 4 S unit difference on signal strength but almost always a much bigger noise drop.  I pretty much exclusively listen on the beverage and don't even bother listening on the transmit antenna to EU.  I run 200W max while DXing (100 - 150W in contests depending on contest).  If I ran High Power I might listen to the transmit antenna more for comparison.  With preamp on, all it does is raise the noise to within an S unit or 2 from the transmit antenna.  Therefore, I don't use the preamp on 160.

80: 2 el phased array at average height of 55 - 60 feet.  Beverage is about 2 - 3 S-Units down, sometimes only an S-unit down at most (depends on arriving wave angles).  Would only use pre-amp in very low noise conditions, usually don't.  With pre-amp on, the beverage equals, sometimes exceeds, the array in signal strength.  With no pre-amp, the reciever is close but not quite receiver noise floor limited. 

40: 2 el beam at 80 feet.  Here I use the pre-amp 100% of the time.  With that, the beverage is about equal or 1 to 2 S-Units down.  The noise is absolutely quiet much of the time.  Makes working 40M like 15 or 20M experience over half the time.  Basically the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Especially because the F/B is excellent and the F/B on the 40M is like non-existant.

20M: 4/4 at 70 and 35 feet.  I actually use the beveage here with pre-amp on when the top antenna is getting clobbered by rain or snow static.  The Beverage is 2 - 4 Sunits down with pre-amp on, but makes the band quite runaable when it would be terrible otherwise (S9 snow static is a wipe out basically) and doesn't cause me to use the lower antenna and sacrifice "loud factor".

Add the 100 feet if you can and for sure add a terminating resistor to at least a groung rod if you can dedicate it to be a unidirectional antenna and it is pointing roughly where you want it.

the Top Band reflector and ON4UN's book are great resources as well as W8JI's web site.

73

Ed  N1UR