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Re: Topband: Soliciting suggestions on our receive antennas for 5X8C

To: topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: Soliciting suggestions on our receive antennas for 5X8C
From: Herb Schoenbohm <herbs@vitelcom.net>
Reply-to: herbs@vitelcom.net
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:57:10 -0400
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
Dave, You signals are great on 160 night after night with QSB of course. You might wish to try some spider wires hooked to you ground both at the feed point and the termination point. Four or five wires about 60 feet or more fanned out in the RX direction should stabilize the need for a ground. BTW I have two Beverages your way and the 900 foot does very well but the 500 foot is worthless. The same results on 80 meters but not as severe. The spider approach will help in establishing better earthing stability on both ends of the Beverage. any wire will do even pieces of CAT 5 cable with the wires twisted together and laying on the ground.

If you have additional ground rods of even pieces of rebar you can add to your ground in a five foot distance from the main termination. Improving the grounding on each end may help your situation. Also make sure your Beverage run is not near any other noise source or vertical antennas. At least a 100-200 foot separation may help in your circumstance.

On behalf of all those you have worked and the hopeful still trying, the greatest respect for putting Uganda on the air on TB and concentrating on 160 as you have. So many DX-peditions just give up after the first problem working stations on TB and look for a higher Q-rate on higher bands. Your devotion to 160 is awesome.

Regards,

Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ






On 2/10/2013 5:05 AM, Dave wrote:
Hi All,

My team is currently on DXpedition to Uganda 5X8C

We have erected receive antennas here in 5X with very poor success. W e have 
used the same antennas at other places with great success.  Please read below 
and if you can offer some constructive suggestions please reply to me and copy 
reflector.  Davek4sv@yahoo.com


We are experiencing some weird problems with our receive antennas.  We have a 
beverage about 540 feet long, terminated properly about 5 to 6 feet over the 
ground.  I have built plenty of these at my house, they all work.  This one 
here does not.  It hears noise but no signals.  Once In a while you can hears 
signals.

So put you're receive antenna hat on.  We suspect the ground is the problem.  
We are located on the shore of Victoria Lake at a resort.  The soil appears to 
be sandy but with fresh water lake nearby. 200 feet.  The beverage is in the 
clear away from large metal objects.

With a 510 ohm termination we measure about 235 ohms when looking across the 
termination resistor.  Using resistor theory essentially we have two 
resistances in parallel.  The wire , termination transformer, ground rods and 
ground are about 500 ohms.  Having not measured this at home I'm not sure if 
this is too low or too high of resistance.

We erected a Flag 29x14 feet mounted just above the ground.  This is purported 
to be ground independent.  Our tests last night indicate this antenna is not 
hearing very well either.

We are soliciting suggestions.  We only have a small amount of wire and other 
antenna stuff, no Home Depot or Radio Shack around.  Perhaps we can build a 
ground independent antenna that does not care what it sits on.

We have or can source some wooden poles to make wire radiators.

The 5X8C team thanks you in I



Thank You in Advance,

Dave Anderson, 5X/K4SV

Sent from my iPad in Uganda
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