[TowerTalk] Beverage on Ground: 50 ohm or 75 ohm system?

[john at kk9a.com]

I use 50 ohm coax for all RX antennas (Beverages, Pennants, etc). I either
use old Heliax or RG8X and use mostly UHF connectors. I guess 75 ohm and F
connectors are popular because of pricing but 50 ohm works perfectly. BTW
I have a lot of deer and they seem to be good at avoiding my temporary
Beverages.

John KK9A



To:	Towertalk
Date:	Wed, 24 Jan 2018 06:47:17 -0600

I'm working on installing my first 160 receive array.

I don't have room for traditional beverages.  Ground mounted receive loops
like the K9AY array will not be a good solution as I have a large deer
population that would end up tearing it down.  We had an 8 point buck with
xmas lights hanging off his antlers so I don't think loops would survive

As I go through the design I'm trying to determine if I should use a 75
ohm system (the most common due to cheap rg-6 coax I suppose) or a 50 ohm
system.  I have plenty of rg-8x coax laying around and I could use a
remote coax switch to get all of the signals (4) from two reversible
Beverage on Ground (BOG) arrays.  I would prefer to bring in a single coax
to the shack vs 4 separate lines.

Will a 50 ohm system play well with the available pre-amps.  All of the
pre-amps I have found have F-connectors which leads me to believe they are
setup for 75 ohms.  If I go with RG-8x/50ohm matching transformers do I
need to consider a 50 to 75 ohm transformer before going into the pre-amp?

What about the output of the pre-amp into the 50 ohm input of the receiver?

Thanks in advance.

Rich - N5ZC