A need for a Beverage?

[joesheets]

Here is my situation:
Ham operator with Kenwood TS-590S and a TS-940S. Both have very good receive, the 590 having DSP and a bunch more RX bells and whistles than the 940.
I have 2 antennas up at present; A 40 meter inverted Vee, center @ 35' ends @ 6' and a Hustler 6BTV vertical with 100 50' radials on the ground. I use it for 80 -10 meters.
These antennas give me good performance on TX and RX on ham bands and some performance on SW, but I want to really get more into SW DX.
I have a large lot (almost an acre) w many trees (and no wife and little to no covenant restrictions for antennas)

My question is:
Would it be worth my while to install a Beverage antenna?
I am thinking of stringing 500-1000' of wire around my property. I could probably get it 10-20' up pretty easily.
Or is there some other, better antenna solution?

Thanks
Joe

[ka3jjz]

Beverages are extremely directional off their ends - and you can make it unidirectional (more or less) by grounding one end through a resistor. The value of that resistor can and does change somewhat due to soil conductivity. In short if you have the space (and me being a cave dweller, I'm envious), and can put something up like that, wanting to hear stuff from only 1 direction, go for it...

There are MANY other designs out there, depending on what it is your're trying to hear and from what areas of the world. The ARRL antenna book is always a good reference point, but we have lots of other links here...

HF Antennas - The RadioReference Wiki

and I wouldn't overlook a good skyloop, either.

Those 2 radios should handle lots of incoming RF without blinking an eye, so there should be little concern about overloading (although anything is possible..). You have lots of possibilities here

Mike

[nickcarr]

A beverage is directional and generally for MW DX. If you have the land, then I would go for the sky loop antenna. It's cheap to make and can be put up in about an hour.

The key is height. The stations that I've actually "heard" on HF are installations that start at 10m or more. One field-day station had one at 80ft and it had a crazy good signal but that is how it's suppose to work.



If you can spend a little money, then you might want to consider a Wellbrook loop. It's an amplified loop antenna that takes up less space. It can also take advantage of your extra space because you want it in open environment -- with as little noise as possible. It does an amazing job for it's size. Mount a rotator and it's also directional from about 6 Mhz on down.

Active Loop Antenna ALA1530S+ Imperium N.American

Here's a picture of mine:

[trsundstrom]

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Joe, maybe these articles http://w2xq.com/bm-ar.html#antenna by Harold Beverage would be of interest. I loved the 1000' Beverage here, but the aperture was pretty small at 7 MHz.

I also used a full-size horizontal 40m loop -- 30' or so up -- with a matching stub when I was active on the SWL net. The non-directional high angle played nicely for net coverage up to 1 hop away.

FWIW I had a 1/4-wave vertical 160m wire tied to the top of a pitch pine, and an 80' vertical wire for the receiver. Low takeoff angle, particularly interesting for the rapid fading at twilight and for late at night. You might find the experiment interesting.

HTH.

[ka3jjz]

The American competitor to the Wellbrook is the Pixel.

Shortwave Magnetic Loop Antenna (Model: RF PRO-1B) | Pixel Technologies

Since you're a ham, it should be noted that it has a t/r relay to disconnect it for transmit - something I don't think (I could be wrong) the Wellbrook has....Mike

[k9rzz]

Judging by what you already have up (vertical with 50 radials), I can tell you have good knowledge of what it takes to put up a high performance antenna. So, just apply those same principles for SWBC DXing.

For >2,000 miles coverage on any frequency, you need low angles of receive and/or directivity.

For <7mhz, the beverage antenna is king, it gives you both low angles and directivity. It's gotta be straight though, not 'around' your property. Loops are the other big performers on the lowest frequencies.

For >7mhz the beverage looses its performance so you're back to traditional antennas: verticals and beams.

You might try some Vee Beams, wire yagis, or quad loops (vertically oriented and fed on the -side-, not the bottom). All HF DX antenna principles still apply and that includes height, you gotta get 'em up in the air as best you can.

The old man in me talking now : in my 37 years as a ham, the BEST antenna I've ever used (not mine) was 4 over 4 full sized yagis for 20 meters on a 120 ft rotating tower. How was it DX? Pfffft. KICK A**! Breaking HUGE pileups with just a few calls for stations in deep Asia. The problem is that the guys with that kind of set up have no interest in the shortwave broadcasting, it's all about DXCC. Next best, I think, was in college where again we had a full sized 20 meter beam, 120 ft above ground on a campus building. (Height + directivity). We worked TONS of DX and I also used it for shortwave listening. I would turn the beam to null 15mhz WWV and hear JJY Tokyo and BPM Peking almost at will. Excellent. From my own home (1/2 acre lot) my best performers were elevated verticals (I don't have room for radials) and quad loops. Not, horizontal loops, but hung vertically and -fed on the side- for vertical polarization and low angle sensitivity. My full sized, 40 meter loop barely cleared the ground on the bottom, but I would work VKs and ZLs every night with 300 watts. I had it fed with -window line- through a tuner and the shortwave band performance was excellent.On the 49 meter band, in December when the days were shortest, I could hear stations (weakly) ALL DAY LONG. It loaded and worked will on 80 meters as well, working DX there, and hearing tons of great DX on 90 and 60 meter tropical bands to boot (using the tuner). For medium wave the beverage is king. Hands down. I put up a 700 ft wire -on the ground- in a local park and heard British Virgin Islands S9 all alone. The other MW antenna I had was 50 ft of 1/2 hardline hung vertically in a pine tree with a few long radials. That really pulled in the Mexican stations well. I would phase that against a low wire, or against a loop and pull in the distant stuff. For longwave, loops rank up there with beverages. The top dogs on that band all seem to use loops.

So, the answer to your questions is for under 7mhz, yes, the Beverage is king. Hands down. Be sure to share some logs!

[joesheets]

Thanks for all of the suggestions!
I looked at the magnetic loops, but they are a bit pricey for me now.
I like the idea of the loops. I have read some info on them and they sound very good. I will have to do some more looking into the actual construction and find the right trees!
Joe

[BDM123]

Have you considered a BOG? Kilokat (member here) has had very good luck with phased BOGs.

Originally Posted by joesheets

Here is my situation:
Ham operator with Kenwood TS-590S and a TS-940S. Both have very good receive, the 590 having DSP and a bunch more RX bells and whistles than the 940.
I have 2 antennas up at present; A 40 meter inverted Vee, center @ 35' ends @ 6' and a Hustler 6BTV vertical with 100 50' radials on the ground. I use it for 80 -10 meters.
These antennas give me good performance on TX and RX on ham bands and some performance on SW, but I want to really get more into SW DX.
I have a large lot (almost an acre) w many trees (and no wife and little to no covenant restrictions for antennas)

My question is:
Would it be worth my while to install a Beverage antenna?
I am thinking of stringing 500-1000' of wire around my property. I could probably get it 10-20' up pretty easily.
Or is there some other, better antenna solution?

Thanks
Joe

[ab3a]

Years ago I recall reading about an analysis of Beverage antennas. The author made a claim that sounds reasonable:

If you took two very short vertical antennas and coupled them with a very high impedance transmission line, you'd have a directional pattern that looks a lot like a beverage. The reason a beverage works the way it does is because the transmission line uses a lossy ground connection to reduce the effectiveness of one of the antennas.

Now, I'm sure I've oversimplified and forgotten some aspects of the analysis, but it does ring true to me. If you erected two small antennas over a wavelength apart, you could easily build a phased array that has similar if not better, effectiveness.

Another way to look at this would be to set up two short (active?) antennas and to run transmission lines back to your shack. Adjust the phase difference between these antennas before running them in to your receiver. I'll bet you'll get some fantastic nulls and directional reception.

[LtDoc]

The best beverages I've found so far has been 'MillerLyte' and whatever has 'VSOP' on the label...

[k9rzz]

Originally Posted by ab3a

Years ago I recall reading about an analysis of Beverage antennas. The author made a claim that sounds reasonable:

If you took two very short vertical antennas and coupled them with a very high impedance transmission line, you'd have a directional pattern that looks a lot like a beverage. The reason a beverage works the way it does is because the transmission line uses a lossy ground connection to reduce the effectiveness of one of the antennas.

Now, I'm sure I've oversimplified and forgotten some aspects of the analysis, but it does ring true to me. If you erected two small antennas over a wavelength apart, you could easily build a phased array that has similar if not better, effectiveness.

Another way to look at this would be to set up two short (active?) antennas and to run transmission lines back to your shack. Adjust the phase difference between these antennas before running them in to your receiver. I'll bet you'll get some fantastic nulls and directional reception.

There was one guy posting logs from his FOUR loop phased array. He'd phase 'em in pairs, and then feed that pair in to another phaser. Had to be hard as hell, but he could do it.

Another gent in the Chicago area routinely phased BOGs in his large back yard making loggings that no one could ever match. I asked him several times if he could record the audio to share with us, but he kept saying that he couldn't figure out how to do that. Okayyyyyy ....

[kilokat7]

Originally Posted by k9rzz

Another gent in the Chicago area routinely phased BOGs in his large back yard making loggings that no one could ever match. I asked him several times if he could record the audio to share with us, but he kept saying that he couldn't figure out how to do that. Okayyyyyy ....

He's since figured it out and has shared a few of those audio recordings with me. His BCB catches are simply amazing and it was Kaz that got me hooked on the whole phased BOG idea several years ago after reading his amazing BCB logs. I can confirm, the performance on the medium wave band is amazing if you've got the space to lay out a pair of long wires on the ground. They also do pretty well on the lower shortwave bands.

[k9rzz]

Has he got those recordings posted somewhere?