Reg,
the subject of discussion on TopBand reflector was conductivity of earth under
the beverage or effect of wire placed on the ground and its effect on the
preformance of the Beverage antenna (above). Here is the repeat of W8JI portion
of the posting on this subject:

The only thing that prevents people from shooting themselves
in the foot with the wire below the Beverage is the wire
couples to the lossy media below it so well it becomes very
lossy, and of course that means it doesn't help with
stability or termination.

- "" wire below the Beverage"" there is aconsiderable discussion on this
subject there.
My problem is with the statement " the wire
couples to the lossy media below it so well it becomes very
lossy"
As far as I know, to make wire lossy, one must increase resistance by some
means. In my book, wire maintains its conductivity regardless what it is laying
on, and that overrides the effect of lossy ground underneath.

Speaking of Beverages and their poor performance over good ground or salt
water, most people find it is true, some claim still good performance on LF and
MF. While operating from VE1ZZ place and using his beverages, he has one that
is running over the rocky ground, slightly down hill, 90 deg towards the salt
water and it is terminated via resistor into the stainless steel hubcap in the
salt water. That sucker beats anything else we tried, pair of staggered
beverages or phased ones. So it appears that Beverage stretched over poor
ground but terminated in the good ground beats their "better" cousins. We are
talking about 160 - 40m and definitely not using it for transmit.
This is reality in by old wives.

Regards, Yuri, K3BU.us



Yuri, I agree in general with your, not out of place, semi-technical
sentiments.

But regarding lossy wires, laid on the ground, as for a Beverage which is
often supposed to depend on ground loss, we must be very careful of making a
virtue out of a vice.

I venture to say the higher an LF Beverage was above the ground the more
efficient, both on receive and transmit, it would have become. The reason a
wire as long the Beverage was so near to the ground was because of the high
cost of a lot of very tall poles.

The rest is old-wives' tales.

Or have I inadvertently changed the subject?
---
Reg.