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Re: Topband: Lesson Learned about ground down lead wires on Beverages

To: Topband <Topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: Lesson Learned about ground down lead wires on Beverages
From: Ken Brown <ken.d.brown@hawaiiantel.net>
Reply-to: ken.d.brown@hawaiiantel.net
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:31:15 -1000
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
Hi Art and group,

    Taking the simplest example, a single wire Beverage fed with a 
transformer and coax, the Beverage wire, the transformer primary, the 
ground down lead wire and the ground are all in series. Currents induced 
into the vertical wire flow through the transformer primary, just like 
the currents in the Beverage wire do. As far as I can see it won't 
matter whether the transformer is up at the level of the Beverage wire, 
or down at ground level. It is still a series circuit, and the current 
induced in that down lead flows through the transformer primary. How can 
this be prevented?

Art said:

"Mine is a two-wire beverage Ken, with the rx connection taken at the 
center tap of the matching transformer. A single wire as in your example 
below would indeed act differently to vertical reception off the ground 
wire."

     I think that with a two wire Beverage the problem is the same. In 
the "normal direction" the common mode currents pass through both halves 
of the primary of the differential mode transformer (that is used for 
the "reverse direction" feed) to the center tap, and then on to the 
common mode transformer primary and then via the short vertical section 
to the ground system. Just as in a single wire Beverage, the Beverage 
antenna wire(s), the transformer primary, the vertical down lead and the 
ground are all connected in series. Currents induced in the vertical 
down lead will flow through the transformer primary, whether the 
transformer is down at ground level or up at the Beverage antenna wire 
level. How can the signal pick up on that short vertical wire not be 
coupled through the transformer to the coax?

     Misek says to slope the ends of the Beverage down to ground level 
and Rauch says it wont help. I once had a bunch of Beverages over 
terrain which sloped downward in a sort of concave fashion, such that I 
could keep the Beverage wires straight along their whole length, while 
having the feed end and far end at ground level, requiring no short 
section of vertical wire for the ground connection. They worked great, 
but that was a special situation that does not exist if you have only 
flat land to work with.

     Art, I am not disputing your results. If it works better for you 
that way, then by all means keep doing it. I am just trying to 
understand it.

Thanks,

Ken N6KB



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