[TowerTalk] Beverage Antenna

[Earl Morse]

Hans,

My experience with the Beverage is limited but that probably puts me ahead of about 99% of the ham population who have never built one.

I built a set of NE/NW one wavelength Beverages for XA5T when we used to contest there.  These were single support antennas anchored by a ground rod at the feed point and another at the termination.  The wire was aluminum electric fence wire (17 gauge Fido Shock) because it was cheap and didn't have to be durable since we laid the antenna out before the contest and rolled them back up after the contest to use again the next year.   The hardest part was hacking through the brush and cactus to get them strung up.  I used a fiber glass support (3 sections of military camoflage net support) for the center post.  The ground rods at the termination and feed point provided the end anchors.

Performance was good.  I used a single balun and fed both antennas at the same point, allowing me to switch between them with only one run of coax back to the shack.  They were directive and it was easy to switch between NE and NW making the W1s go away and the W7s pop up.  With this directivity and the supposed cardioid pattern I believe the big advantage was increased S/N by eliminating noise in one direction while maintaining signal from the desired direction.  They were one wavelength on 160M but we used them with success on 80 and 40 as well.

Once you get the initial antenna up, whether it be a wavelength of wire laying on the ground or a single support model like I built, you will have to more than double your efforts to get a readily noticeable improvement in the performance of the antenna.  You might just want to try the simplest design and see how it works before improving on it with enhanced terminations, multiwires, and beefed up ground systems.

Earl
N8SS
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:15:36 -0500
From: Hans Hammarquist via TowerTalk <towertalk at contesting.com>
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Beverage Antenna
Message-ID: <8D20A62EA8E9BAC-F9C-ADD7 at webmail-vm060.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi Fellow Towertalkers,

I'm considering putting "up" a Beverage antenna and have some questions regarding what I can do and not do to get it work good. I looked in to it and find the two-wire version being worthwhile.

How important is it that the two wires are side-by-side. Can one be on top of the other? The installation will be a lot easier if one can be on top of the other.

Do the wires have to be absolutely parallel?

Do the wires have to be on a straight line or do they have constant height above ground? The area I planning to put the antenna is not even but rather hilly. 

Do the antenna have to be in a clear area or can it be surrounded by trees? How close can the trees be? Can I, maybe, use trees as support? I really don't want to cut too much trees to put this thing up.

What type of ground do I have to install in the far end? I guess a grounding rod is not enough.

Is there some phasing device available to make a steerable antenna by using two or three Beverage antennae together.? I think I saw or heard about something about this but don't remember.

Best 73 de,

Hans - N2JFS


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