Thanks for the reply Matt. I have had a few Beverages and a SAL 30. I found
that 300’ was too short to be of much use, but occasionally came in handy.
At one point I had 4 Bevs with only the EU being 600’ and the others being
about 300’. I had fairly good results into EU and better than the transmit
vertical in the other directions. The land north of me is now being
developed, so I lost my EU Bev and ended up taking down the others when I
got a SAL 30.
Now I am going to move back to the country on 7 1/2 ac. (The “city” has
moved in all around me here.) I hope to have a receive array of short
verticals of some type. (Looking at the 4square from DXE), plus the SAL 30
and some 2 wire reversible Beverages. I enjoy 160, 80 and 40 all, so the 4
square would have to be a compromise dimension for the side length. I have
determined from the responses that the Beverages would almost surely work
no matter what the contour of the Earth is. I am hoping that the variety of
receive antennas will fill in the “voids” for each other. After trying
everything out for awhile, I may find the Beverages to not be worth the
trouble, but my experience with receive antennas is that they “seem like
they are not working until they do.” lol
When I first put up the 600’ EU Beverage it didn’t seem to work very well
until the fourth night when it worked very well. The SAL 30 always seems to
work well, but I have not had any other antenna to compare it to other than
a 1/4 wave vertical transmit antenna which is close to useless on receive.
The 4sq and SAL 30 will be about 500’ apart, so I can try diversity
reception.
Chuck W5PR
On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 1:16 AM <maflukey@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Chuck,
>
> I have had a lot of Beverages up at my antenna farm over the years and
> here's my observations... Sloping ground does not really affect Beverage
> performance as long as the height of the wire above the ground is held
> reasonably constant. The surge impedance changes when the wire height
> changes... 10' high for tractors and deer antlers works fine for 160m
> and 80m but not so good on 40m or higher. Beverages love poor ground
> conductivity, they do no perform as well when ground conductivity
> increases. They are worthless around salt water. My ground is pretty
> conductive so my Beverages always work better in the dry months - summer
> and fall, and they invariably don't work nearly so good in the wet months.
> Regarding bidirectional, if you mean without a termination resistor I
> think you will like it better with one - it really improves the RDF of the
> antenna and receive is all about improving S/N ratio. The reason I ask
> is it is also possible to make a bidirectional Beverage with two feedlines
> at one end - one for each direction. I have made these before using
> ladder (window) line, requires three transformers per antenna. Let me
> know if you are interested in these and I can send you some info - but I
> would sure just build one or two single direction Beverages and see how
> well they work for you first. Every Beverages I have ever built running
> parallel to, and anywhere within about 50 ft of a power line, has been
> useless because of the noise picked up off the power lines - this is an
> unfortunate characteristic of high impedance antennas - they are easily
> affected by other re-radiating noise sources. So avoid running parallel
> to power lines - perpendicular is fine. I try to use real carbon
> resistors if when I can find them - I once had a small wattage metal film
> one fry from electrostatic charge. So if metal film - go with higher
> wattage rating. It usually does not take much ground to terminate a
> beverage - I have used as little as 24" of copper pipe pounded in the
> ground - but again I have pretty conductive soil. I stopped grounding my
> feedlines to the earth ground at the Beverage feedpoint many years back
> because I found it was causing common mode reception issues - now I just
> connect the feedline across the transformer only and ground the feedline
> back at the shack. Also avoid running the feedline parallel to the
> antenna - it will become an antenna ground and kill the directionality of
> the antenna. Also be aware that a feedline laying on the ground can
> also become a Beverage-on-ground antenna unless grounded at the shack.
> By the way, I use RG-6, works fine. I have had varmints chew my Beverage
> feedlines before and break through the jacket which lets water in... so I
> have been buying the flooded RG-6 cable lately. It's moot because all my
> feedlines are in underground conduit now. A few years ago I put up a
> Circle-8 receive array. I like it a lot. It works as good, if not
> better, than my longest Beverages (about 800 ft), and it's performance is
> not dependent on soil dryness, and I'm not having to do maintenance....
> but I still use keep my Beverage supplies handy and can generally throw one
> up temporarily in a few hours if needed, but I haven't needed to do that
> since using the receive array.
>
> Anyway, good luck on your project and remember what the OT's say - any
> Beverage is better than no Beverage. 😉
>
> 73
> Matt
> KM5VI
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TowerTalk <towertalk-bounces@contesting.com> On Behalf Of Chuck
> Dietz
> Sent: Wednesday, August 2, 2023 1:15 PM
> To: Towertalk Reflector <towertalk@contesting.com>
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Beverage on Sloping Ground
>
> Am I correct in assuming that Beverage wires sloping downward from the
> feed point to the termination will work better than ones that slope upward?
> I have two places I would like to put bidirectional Beverages, but they are
> both on sloping ground. I’m wondering if it would be worth the effort to
> make them bidirectional or should I just go with unidirectional ones toward
> the downslope direction? Soil is good and the slope would be about 10’ or a
> little less in the 500’ or so lengths. They will be about 10’ high so the
> tractor will go under them. Quiet country local.
>
> Chuck W5PR
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