[TowerTalk] Beverage Antenna

[Joe Subich, W4TV]

> I'm curious to know if the fence would act similar to good
> conductivity dirt WRT Beverage performance.

Anecdotal reports over the years (~ 30?) of Beverage antennas over
an existing conductive wire/fence indicates that performance lags
that over moderate earth.  The degradation comes from two apparent
modes: 1) the (typically larger) fence picks up noise and couples it
to the Beverage and 2) the the conductive nature of the fence upsets
the velocity factor (wave tilt) resulting in a shorter effective
length with lower signal strengths and broader patterns.

73,

   ... Joe, W4TV


On 2015-02-03 8:39 AM, Patrick Greenlee wrote:
> Chuck, A very good point.
>
> That is the essence of my interest in the effect of having some parallel
> grounded conductors (5 strand barbed wire fence with steel posts) a
> short (TBD) distance below the beverage antenna. I'm curious to know if
> the fence would act similar to good conductivity dirt WRT Beverage
> performance.
>
> If not, then what if the antenna wire were mounted above 3 parallel but
> horizontally spaced conductors looking for the beginnings of the effect
> that would be achieved theoretically with our old friend the infinite
> conductive plane over which we mount our verticals?  Why 3?  Because it
> would be easy to put a strand of wire on either side of the top strand
> of barbed wire using readily available inexpensive plastic insulating
> arms made expressly for adding electric fence wire to a fence built with
> T-posts. With a little more fussing I could attach 2 wires either side
> of the center wire giving a better approximation of the infinite plane.
> One of our experts can maybe tell  me if the parallel grounded wires
> need to be tied together laterally or if that would matter.
>
> Patrick      NJ5G
>
>