Technical Topics > Equipment
The Beverage Antenna, 100 Years Later
ChrisSmolinski:
Well worth reading, this article describes how a Beverage antenna actually works, which is very useful if you decide to build one. I have two here, a 500 ft aimed northeast to Europe, and an unterminated 400 ft aimed south, which also works well due north. I leave it un-terminated specifically to listen to an otherwise weak pirate / part 15 station on 1620 kHz :)
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST/This%20Month%20in%20QST/2021/11%20November%202021/Silver%20Donovan.pdf
RobRich:
The beverage can be a great traveling wave antenna, and agreed, even as just basically an unterminated wire on the ground.
I used to have an 148' unterminated beverage-on-ground pointing vaguely NW/SE. It was good for monitoring continental NA amateur comms on 80m through 20m, and decent off the other end for listening to MW to mid-HF Caribbean broadcast stations.
Elf36:
Yeah. definitely have plans for one. Just hope I can get it pointed in a good direction. A lot of people use them for the receive on 80/160 receive set-up's. and transmit on a different antenna. I gotta admit though, don't you need as much of a good antenna to transmit back though? Providing they're not using such a great receive antenna?
RobRich:
Often the idea on the lower bands is to optimize the receive signal-to-noise ratio due to higher noise profiles at lower frequencies. The idea is regardless of whatever other operators are using, you can not work them if you can not hear them. ;)
You have the scenario right. Many HF ops use a vertical or inverted-L to transmit and a beverage or similar directional SNR-optimized antenna system for receive on the low-HF bands. Verticals can be great for transmitting DX on 160 and 80, but sometimes quite noisy on receive, especially is subjected to nearby manmade RFI.
Regardless of band, think about how many comparatively low-power and/or antenna-limited stations often can work much larger stations having stacked beams, curtain arrays, multiple beverages, etc. The smaller stations are relying on the larger stations to do most of the so-called "heavy lifting" for both transmit and receive.
ChrisSmolinski:
--- Quote from: Elf36 on November 04, 2021, 0011 UTC ---I gotta admit though, don't you need as much of a good antenna to transmit back though? Providing they're not using such a great receive antenna?
--- End quote ---
Beverages are for receiving and not, IIRC, for transmitting.
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