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Re: Topband: Phased staggered beverages

To: <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: Phased staggered beverages
From: Terry Conboy <n6ry@arrl.net>
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:59:08 -0700
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
At 11:33 AM 2008-09-01, VE6WZ_Steve wrote:
>I am planning to add a second EU Beverage wire parallel and staggered
>about 25 m behind my existing EU wire and use the phase box in the shack
>for phasing the two together.
>
>Since the phasing provides the F/B pattern, is it necessary to have the
>Bev. wires terminated??  In other words, why not phase two
>**bi-directional un-terminated** wires together and use the phase box
>switch the pattern around.
>
>I have modeled this with my MININEC program and it seems to look ok, but
>I don't trust MININEC for beverage modeling.
>
>Anyone done this??

I haven't done this, but one issue is that with unterminated 
Beverages, the input impedance is a lot more variable (and usually 
reactive) and that could make it harder to get the current magnitudes 
equal and the phase to the desired value.  There can be a significant 
amount of mutual coupling between unterminated Beverages that 
complicates the phasing (as in many TX arrays).

I looked at an EZNEC model over "Real/High Accuracy" ground (with 2 
perpendicular radials at each of the ground points) and surprisingly 
the pattern toward the open end doesn't look too different with or 
without terminations (167.6 m long, 25 m stagger, 4 m separation, 
1.83 m high).  Of course, this is with equal currents and ideal 
phasing (85 degrees).

The pattern away from the open end with equal currents but with the 
sign of the phase angle reversed doesn't have quite as clean a 
pattern, however.  The F/B is about 12 dB, vs. 30 dB in the other 
direction.  Some of this is probably because a single unterminated 
Beverage has about 2.5 dB F/B (using the dimensions above).  The 
unterminated F/B increases with overall length.

Changing the current ratio and phase angle for the "reverse" pattern 
can increase the back null significantly, however.  With -95 degrees 
and current ratio of 1.5:1, I was able to obtain a 30 db F/B.

If you have one of those variable receive phasing boxes, you can 
probably find a setting that gives nice patterns by experimentation.

73, Terry N6RY

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