Fritz, for the last year I've been remotely switching my single wire
Beverage in uni and bi-directional modes. There are more knowledgable folks
on this reflector who can address the technical particulars, but my
understanding and experience is that the gain is identical in the two modes
but in the unidirectional mode (when properly terminated) the s/n ratio is
significantly better because you're cutting off all the received noise
energy from the nulled quadrants.
To answer your next to last question, you need uni-directionality because
you need every dB of s/n ratio you can muster in working dx on 160M.
Hearing is everything (or at least half anyway).
For my second Beverage, I went with 2-wire uni/uni and this is vastly
preferable. And the single wire Beverage will eventually be replaced with
Ladder line, but in the meantime the uni/bi-directional switching is quite
useful although it certainly adds a degree of complexity to tempt Murphy
;-)
GL/73,
Barry N1EU
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