The Beverage Experience: Year 2
Or, “Snakes are welcome in my yard”
Jeff VE1ZAC
I finally have a
working DX antenna for Top Band ! Yahoo. But there
were some issues for getting my new “WindoVert” to
work, and one of them was to treat that downlead area
for the Windom as a vertical antenna. And that meant no horizontal wires
running 12” away at 8 feet off the ground.
If you followed my
series of Beverage articles, last winter I discovered the joys of a shortish, reversible and null steering Beverage
, called an SWA by Victor Mizek, an authority
on these things. I took this antenna down in the summer because it was in the
way of my summer back yard activities. I left the terminations in place so it
literally took an hour to re-erect the antenna and plug it in. All fine and
dandy, but it was re radiating my 160M transmission from the WindoVert. I had to either move it or look at some other
options. I didn’t want to loose it, as anyone with a Beverage of any sort will
attest. And, in surveying the yard I really had no where else to put it without
drastically shortening the length. It’s only about 200 feet long as is.
What to do ?
I have read a few
articles on BOG antennas, or Beverage On Ground. This
is actually what Harold Beverage originally experimented with when he invented
the thing. John Devoldere and Victor Mizek both discuss these antennas in their Beverage books
and Victor suggests that these will work fine with the exact same reversible
setup I currently have. Even the antenna impedance will work fine. They also
theoretically work better over crappy ground ( Did
someone say
I turned it on in
the shack, and…. the darn thing works ! In fact, it works better than the elevated
wire in some respects. This thing now obviously favours
160M and works less well on 80 and 40. A reverse of the
previous setup. But work it does, shows reverse
gain properly and still lets me steer the null around anywhere I choose. Very cool. It’s a keeper, and the interference is non
existent to the 160M transmit antenna.
BTW, I put this
antenna into the receive only port on my Pro 3, but be warned this is a very unprotected port. Sultronics
makes a nice little port saver device which is highly recommended for this
task. Gary and I both use these things. You can make one yourself if you can
find a reed relay and a few bits to do the job.
I have been
listening around for the last few evenings with it and am very pleased. Who
would think that something lying on the ground could work so well
? Oh yeah, the title. These things are also known as “Snake” antennas.