[TowerTalk] Beverage Antenna

Tue Feb 3 15:28:41 EST 2015

Gary, Maybe not a split rail but I have plans for a three rail vinyl 
fence in front of the house and it will pass near the barn where my 
multi-channel remote control coaxial antenna relays are located.  The 
plan it to put electric fence wire between the decorative rails to 
discourage stock from pushing the fence over.  I exclude the herd from 
this particular pasture from spring greenup time till well after the 
grass recofvers from (typically) July haying.  Maybe I can dual purpose 
the wire and share it so that it can be switched into Beverage mode or 
electric fence mode.  Then the question becomes:  is it OK to have dual 
parallel conductors vertically stacked with a couple feet of separation 
for a Beverage antenna?

If I use only one of the wires as an antenna, then what?  Would the 
choice of best wire be made based on knowledge and theory or try and 
see?    Decision decisions...  I guess I will have to bite the bullet 
and load up the antenna modeling program that came with the ARRL antenna 
handbook (I think,)

  Patrick   NJ5G

On 2/3/2015 1:17 PM, Gary - AB9M wrote:
> Patrick,
>
> It'd  be much better if you could replace the barbed wire fence with a 
> split rail or other non-conductive material fence. I once stapled hook 
> up wire along the top rail of a split rail fence running on three 
> sides of my acre lot ( two sides 120' x one side 240'). Running a 
> single wire to the shack and Dentron 160 - AT Transmatch, I used a 
> noise bridge to set the output impedance for the AUX Antenna jack of 
> my Corsair-II to 50 Ohms on 80 & 75 meters.  The low wire may not have 
> been a true Beverage, but it was a very low noise antenna which 
> allowed me to work 4X on SSB at my Sunset. I received a couple 
> skeptical on the air comments from others who couldn't even hear the 
> Israel end, but I have the QSLs.
>
> ON4UN's Low Band DXing book or the ARRL Antenna Handbook, provide the 
> the theory; try to NOT deviate too far in your application, unless you 
> want the results to deviate far too much from your expectations.
>
>
> 73 & DX,
>
> Gary - AB9M
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Patrick Greenlee
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2015 7:39 AM
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Beverage Antenna
>
> 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
>
>
> On 2/3/2015 7:00 AM, Chuck Dietz wrote:
>> Part of the problem with comparisons of low band receiving antennas 
>> made in
>> various locations is that the composition of the ground under the 
>> antenna
>> makes a huge difference.
>>
>> Chuck W5PR
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Roger (K8RI) on TT 
>> <K8RI-on-TowerTalk at tm.net
>>> wrote:
>>> That's why I have the  HB and Antenna HB on the same machine as the 
>>> mail.
>>> Items, topics, and components are so much easier and faster to find 
>>> than
>>> with hard print.  Less than 10 keystrokes to find nearly any 
>>> specifics on a
>>> topic. Course as some of my answers have shown, I'm too lazy to always
>>> double check!
>>>
>>> I can't say the computer is smaller, lighter, or cheaper at 60#, 23"H X
>>> 7.5"W X 20" D, running 8  64 bit cores/CPUs @ 4.1 GHz, & 16 GB of  
>>> RAM and
>>> cost less than half our first color TV. OTOH  the Internet has been 
>>> a POS
>>> this past week, so I'm glad I had most of the data here. Still, with
>>> posted links on mans news groups, they came up invalid (err 404) 
>>> even from
>>> news sites and some ham pages were taking so long to load they timed 
>>> out.
>>> I don't think I was getting more than a fraction of the 100 Mbs 
>>> service I
>>> pay for.
>>>
>>> Speaking of "pay for" and I think this is relevant to hams who 
>>> depend on
>>> electricity... My electric use in the shop has been down this past 
>>> year and
>>> on the equalized billing plan It almost doubled last month (with 
>>> less use)
>>> I think I smell a rate increase a coming.
>>>
>>> 73
>>>
>>> Roger  (K8RI)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/2/2015 2:14 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon,2/2/2015 10:05 AM, Don wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> First, I'm surprised there does not seem to be any published
>>>>> measurements taken at a common test site of a Beverage at various 
>>>>> heights
>>>>> and lengths (such as done with yagi's, and other antennas on test 
>>>>> ranges).
>>>>>
>>>> Why do you assume that nothing like this exists? Beverages have been
>>>> around for nearly a century, and it is quite likely that there's a 
>>>> lot of
>>>> published work that you haven't looked for in scientific journals. 
>>>> It's
>>>> also possible to model antennas like this and do your own study. 
>>>> There's a
>>>> lot about Beverages (and other RX antennas) in the ON4UN book, and 
>>>> in the
>>>> ARRL Antenna Book.
>>>>
>>>> Email reflectors like this one should not be a substitute for 
>>>> pulling out
>>>> the books and studying them. Many of us who post answers to 
>>>> questions like
>>>> this have done that study, or done that modeling, or built those 
>>>> antennas,
>>>> and are sharing what we've learned. As VE7RF has noted, optimum 
>>>> height is a
>>>> function of wavelength. When a Beverage is higher than that, it 
>>>> doesn't
>>>> stop working, like throwing a switch, it just becomes less 
>>>> effective. My
>>>> 550 ft Beverages, a full wavelength on 160M, at an average height 
>>>> of 5-6
>>>> ft, are quite effective on 40M, and are still working on 20M! How do I
>>>> know? I run diversity with my K3 using the TX dipole at 125 ft into 
>>>> the
>>>> main RX and the Beverage into the second RX.
>>>>
>>>> 73, Jim K9YC
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>> TowerTalk at contesting.com
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>>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>>
>>> 73
>>>
>>> Roger (K8RI)
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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