On Sep 23, 11:41 am, (Rick) wrote:
I was reading in ON4UNs book, a section about Beverage antennas and decided to
do some checking on mine, which is celebrating its ten year anniversary this
month.

I've been thinking about putting one or two of those up this winter.
I do a lot of BC band listening along with 160m, so should be
interesting. Trying to decide what directions I want to go though..
I think Europe is probably one direction I'll go for sure, but can't
decide about the west.. I'm kind of leaning placing one basically
towards Asia, but haven't really decided yet..
I've never used them before, so it will be something new to
play with.
I'm also kicking around the idea of a new small loop to use up
there that will be quite large. I want it rotatable just like the
ones I use here at home. Will use heavy PVC I imagine.
My largest small loop here so far is a diamond 44 inches a side.
It's indoors next to me on a rotating stand. Stands almost
8 ft tall on the stand, and almost touches the ceiling.
Uses 5 turns.. Tunes 500kc-2300kc using various variable cap
configs.. Longwave if I tack on extra fixed caps.
I'm thinking about an even bigger one to use outdoors.
Maybe double the size of the present one, or even bigger.
I will use it for BC band more than anything, but will probably
rig it to cover 160m at the top of it's range if possible.
I like the loops when daytime BC listening. Very deep nulls.
Some mention using a shielded loop to aid balance, but
I've never needed to here. My conventional solenoid loops
can make a fairly strong unwanted station or noise totally
vanish in most cases in the daytime, when most is received
via ground wave. I want to try the beverages to see if I can
do a bit better at night when the skywave kicks in.
Also maybe be able to hear a bit of weak DX on 160m for
a change.
MK

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:29:54 -0700, wrote:

On Sep 23, 11:41 am, (Rick) wrote:
I was reading in ON4UNs book, a section about Beverage antennas and decided to
do some checking on mine, which is celebrating its ten year anniversary this
month.

snip

This comment isn't re noise with the Beverage, but I believe it might be found interesting to those interested
in Beverage antennas. Below is a quote from an article I published a few months ago in QST.

The Beverage Antenna in WW2
by W2DU

As a monitoring officer with the Radio Intelligence Division (RID) of the FCC in Hawaii during WW2 I was
privy to some interesting situations. Our State Department was of course aware of the operations occurring in
the Pacific Theater. The people there were also aware of the propaganda being spewed by the Japanese
short-wave broadcasters. But State was curious concerning what the Japanese living on the homeland were being
told-were they being told the truth, or the same propaganda as told on the short-wave broadcasts, or a totally
different story. State asked the RID to determine whether we could obtain such information.
We cruised the AM broadcast band and found several nighttime signals from Japanese mainland stations, but
most were too weak to copy. However, JOAK, Tokyo, on 640 KHz was S9, but there was a problem in copying it.
KFI, Los Angeles, was also on 640 KHz with an S9 signal-copying intelligence from JOAK was impossible. How can
we eliminate, or reduce KFI's signal level. A Beverage Wave antenna, perhaps?
We then proceeded to the northern portion of Oahu and constructed a Beverage one-half mile long, five
feet above ground, aimed at Tokyo, and terminated with a 1000-ohm pot resistor to ground at the Tokyo end. We
discovered that by varying the pot resistance we could null the KFI signal to almost zero. The resistance
terminating the Beverage that produced the null was around 600 ohms. Because the matching resistive
termination rendered the Beverage a traveling-wave antenna with no standing wave, the signal from JOAK was
terminated by the input of our receiver, while the signal from KFI was dissipated in the matched resistance at
the Tokyo end of the Beverage-no KFI signal reflected toward the receiver. Voila-JOAK was perfectly readable
for recording!
We sent the first recording to Washington, and State was delighted-requesting that we continue recording
JOAK continuously. Consequently, our recordings were flown daily to Washington from Hickam Field in Honolulu.
We were left in the dark concerning the information on the recordings, and how it affected the War effort,
because State didn't share it with us. But it must have been pretty good, because State was on our case every
day to make sure we sent them the recordings.

Walt, W2DU

On Sep 24, 4:35 pm, Walter Maxwell wrote:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:29:54 -0700, wrote:
On Sep 23, 11:41 am, (Rick) wrote:
I was reading in ON4UNs book, a section about Beverage antennas and decided to
do some checking on mine, which is celebrating its ten year anniversary this
month.

snip

This comment isn't re noise with the Beverage, but I believe it might be found interesting to those interested
in Beverage antennas. Below is a quote from an article I published a few months ago in QST.

The Beverage Antenna in WW2
by W2DU

As a monitoring officer with the Radio Intelligence Division (RID) of the FCC in Hawaii during WW2 I was
privy to some interesting situations. Our State Department was of course aware of the operations occurring in
the Pacific Theater. The people there were also aware of the propaganda being spewed by the Japanese
short-wave broadcasters. But State was curious concerning what the Japanese living on the homeland were being
told-were they being told the truth, or the same propaganda as told on the short-wave broadcasts, or a totally
different story. State asked the RID to determine whether we could obtain such information.
We cruised the AM broadcast band and found several nighttime signals from Japanese mainland stations, but
most were too weak to copy. However, JOAK, Tokyo, on 640 KHz was S9, but there was a problem in copying it.
KFI, Los Angeles, was also on 640 KHz with an S9 signal-copying intelligence from JOAK was impossible. How can
we eliminate, or reduce KFI's signal level. A Beverage Wave antenna, perhaps?
We then proceeded to the northern portion of Oahu and constructed a Beverage one-half mile long, five
feet above ground, aimed at Tokyo, and terminated with a 1000-ohm pot resistor to ground at the Tokyo end. We
discovered that by varying the pot resistance we could null the KFI signal to almost zero. The resistance
terminating the Beverage that produced the null was around 600 ohms. Because the matching resistive
termination rendered the Beverage a traveling-wave antenna with no standing wave, the signal from JOAK was
terminated by the input of our receiver, while the signal from KFI was dissipated in the matched resistance at
the Tokyo end of the Beverage-no KFI signal reflected toward the receiver. Voila-JOAK was perfectly readable
for recording!
We sent the first recording to Washington, and State was delighted-requesting that we continue recording
JOAK continuously. Consequently, our recordings were flown daily to Washington from Hickam Field in Honolulu.
We were left in the dark concerning the information on the recordings, and how it affected the War effort,
because State didn't share it with us. But it must have been pretty good, because State was on our case every
day to make sure we sent them the recordings.

Walt, W2DU

Thanks for the add Walt. Gives me the idea to try a pot instead of a
fixed resister,
so I can tweak it for best results.
MK

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:35:58 -0400, Walter Maxwell
wrote:

The resistance
terminating the Beverage that produced the null was around 600 ohms. Because the matching resistive
termination rendered the Beverage a traveling-wave antenna with no standing wave, the signal from JOAK was
terminated by the input of our receiver, while the signal from KFI was dissipated in the matched resistance at
the Tokyo end of the Beverage-no KFI signal reflected toward the receiver.

Hi Walt,

A wonderful example of applied electronics revealing theoretical
issues (e.g. the Z of the Transmission Line built as an antenna).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

NEC-2 and NEC-2 based programs like EZNEC do a good job of modeling
Beverage antennas. (The EZNEC demo isn't adequate for this.) The only
trick is making the ground connection. In NEC-2 use Sommerfeld ground;
in EZNEC it's called Real, High Accuracy ground. At each end of the
antenna, create a semi-circle of radials, a few inches above the ground.
For wire length, a free-space quarter wavelength is more than adequate
-- the only requirement is that the effective resistance should be
considerably less than the termination resistance. The semi-circles
should be facing away from the antenna, so none of the wires extend
under the antenna wire. Ground "connections" are made to the center of
the semi-circle. This of course assumes that there are reasonably
effective ground connections at both ends of the real antenna.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL