[HCDX]: Which is the best beverage?

["JGarzón" <medidx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hola a todos:
Interesting comments have been posted here about one of our favourite aerials: 
The Beverage. After have readen every posting on this topic and remember all 
our practise in MEDI DX Club erecting beverages and putting away all those 
tamed and wild animal beverage-eaters, I ask myself the following: Do exist a 
perfect beverage and a way to erct it?. My personal opinion is not!

1. Which is the perfect lenght for a beverage?.
It is clear that the longest, the narrower the lobe we get, but I had an interesting 
experience in our latest DXP. We had a 400m long terminated beverage 
towards the Caribbean, a paralell wire (200m unterminated) and a "fishing 
aerial", made with a 7m high fishing cane, acting as a vertical aerial with a MLB 
to match impedances. One of the nights, signals on the beverage were 2 units 
up the others, but other night signals were almost the same in all of them. 
Signal/Noise response was better on the vertical, but only that night. How the 
propagation affects our tests?. It is very difficult to reproduce the perfect lobe 
with a known longitude in a field, because the lobe will be affected for so many 
things (rocks, shrubs and so on...), so the only clear result we can have is: The 
longest, the better for narrow the frontal lobe.

2. Better terminated or unterminated?.
Multiple experiences give us a certain approach. Terminated beverages has two 
main effects: The back lobe is reduced and improves the Signal/Noise relation. 
How the back lobe can be perfectly matched?. Using a variable resistor, but 
may be changed every time we re-tune the frequency, if not we can use a fixed 
resistor with an average result on the entire band. How can we check the 
signal/noise improvement?. Take a two way walky and step further to the 
termination. Disconnect it and ask to your fellow for the result, connect it again 
and ask once more using your walky. Unterminated beverages will get stronger 
splash from back stations. That's a fact!.

3. Erecting the aerial on poles or directly on the ground?
Theory says that a beverage will performs better if stands above the ground 
about 75cm to 1'5m high but, Can we erect a beverage in a perfect flat field? or 
better, do we have a perfect flat terrain to erect the beverage?. In our 1997 Fall 
DXP at Aljezur (Portugal), we had a 600m beverage to erect; when we had put 
up 450m we reached a deep gully (30m high and 100m wide). Mixing our DXer 
capabilities with climbing aptitudes, we descend with our reel, we cross the 
gully through an incredible shrub mess and we get to climb up the opposite 
side of the gully without any damage in our antenna, not an easy task!!!. We 
properly put our beverage up and then connect it to a resistor. Walking back 
the way the beverage looked pretty with the sunset rays on it. Even a helicopter 
could fly below the beverage without damage!!!. When sitting on the receiver, 
the beverage performed really bad. Why?. Perhaps for the change of 
conductivity of the soil, being only 130 cm below the first 450m but more of 
30m down in the last 150m of the cable. Anyway, could be the rocky sand 
where we terminated the beverage?. Who knows!.
On the other hand, we have use beverage directly on the ground or on the 
shrubs with terrific results. I think that if we want to solve this question we had 
to test two identical beverages, one directly on the ground and the other 
elevated; with the same receiver, during one or more DXing nights.

4. The matching problem!
Most of our beverages, correctly terminated and properly erected performs less 
than they could due a resistance mistmach. But to solve this we have to act in  
between the aerial itself and the coax cable, not between the coax and the 
receiver. We have to adapt impedances at that point. We have achieved 
impressive results connecting the beverage to a RF System MLB to adapt the 
high impedance of the aerial to the 50 ohms coaxial. An clear result were 
signals at sunset or sunrise (Grey line DX) when the signals come quite low 
due to the angle, without matching signals were completely lost and when 
matched, signals reached s2 being copied with no problem at all. At night, the 
effect was less noticeable but weaker signals were ONLY get on properly 
matched beverages.

We could follow during hours on this interesting topic, but a final result could be 
that, on beverages, theory and practise does not always fit at all, due to the 
multiple variations on the fields where we erected our mostloved aerials. Also 
we cannot universalize our personal results because we are listening at 
different places. Coorang is not the same that New Founland, New Founland is 
not the same that Sheigra, and this one is not the same that Aljezur in 
Portugal; even if all those beautiful DX spots are close to the sea, aerial fields 
end aside the cliffs, etc...

Also think that even at the same place, features of the surrounding objects 100 
meters away can affect in a different way to our antennae. And what about the 
propagation, changing paths and...

That's why every line we read here about beverages and other topics can make 
us better DXers!

73, Pax et DX 
Jorge Garzón
Mairena del Aljarafe (España): 37.2149N 06.0250W 65 m.s.n.m.
OL/OM: ICOM R71-A, SONY ICF-2010, Dipolo DX Ultra, Cuadros 
FM: SONY ST-S370 + 2x5el yaguis apiladas
Miembro de: MEDI DX, BDXC-UK, British FM&TV CIRCLE, NDB Reflector
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