Beverage(s)

View 175 feet down NW Beverage.

My initial experience with the 2024 ARRL 160m contest demonstrated a serious noise issue on Ward Mountain. The Inverted-L showed an S4 noise level. I needed low-noise receiving antennas.

I'd had some success with the half-size K9AY loops at the Gwinnett station. But I could use something better.

At contest stations such as NQ4I or WW4LL, I've had the opportunity to use Beverage antennas. But  never at my home station.  I planned to change that. 

The Plan

Having a bit of acreage, there's room for several beverages.The key directions were to the NorthEast (NE), SouthEast (SE) and NorthWest (NW). 

For 160m Beverages, many recommend at least 550 feet of wire, minimum. This is just a bit over one wavelength long. ( Technically, using a velocity factor of 95%, one wavelength of wire should be 520 feet at 1.8 MHz ) Since they don't make spools of 550 or 520 feet of wire, a 500 foot spool should be sufficient. 

Wire is expensive. A 500 foot spool of stranded 14 gauge THHN wire is $78 at Home Depot. 

Beverage antennas are pretty simple. The long piece of wire is fed against ground at both ends. The near end uses a matching transformer to adapt the nominal 500 ohm impedance of the Beverage to a feedline. The far end contains a terminating resistor. 

Beverage terminators (above) and
transformers with F-connectors (below)

Terminator Boxes

I built five Beverage terminator boxes using a 470 ohm 2W resistor (OY474KE Ceramic composition resistor) and a 75v gas discharge tube.

These parts fit snugly in a small plastic box. Thumbscrews make for easy connection to the antenna and ground rod.

Transformer Boxes

500:75 ohm transformer

Beverage transformers are wound on BN-73-202 cores. Primary is 3 turns using red wire-wrap wire. Secondary is 8 turns yellow wire-wrap wire. The primary and secondary are separated using cut off bits of plastic stirring straws. The 3:8 turns ratio is a good match for 75 ohm coaxial cable used to feed the antenna. 

Transformer assembly progression

Transformers are housed in the same small plastic boxes. An F connector jack supplies the transformer primary. Transformer secondary connects to thumbscrew posts with another 75 V gas discharge tube across them. There is no common ground connection between the primary and secondary -- this avoids noise pickup from the feedline. 

Thumbscrews connect to the antenna and ground rod at the feed point.

I built four transformers initially. The small plastic boxes work necessitated a bit of ingenuity to get everything in place. 

Erecting

Single wrap traps wire

Installed insulator

Being surrounded by forest, the Beverages are suspended from trees aligned with the reception path. Screw-in electric fence insulators are used to support the antenna about 8 feet off the ground. 

A rope around a tree supplies modest tension for the wire at each end. This leaves the ends relaxed to connect to the transformer or terminator boxes and ground rods. 

The technique for installing the beverages is straightforward, I start by locating the feed point transformer near a supporting tree and mounting an insulator there. Once the ground rod and tension rope are installed, it's a matter of going from tree to tree installing insulators and hooking the wire. This continues until you reach the end of the wire, where the ground rod, terminator box and tension rope are located. 

Terminator installed

Tension connection

At the transformer and terminator, the wire to the ground rod zig-zags a bit to take up the slack from the insulator. This keeps the plastic box from flapping around in the wind.

Every attempt is made to keep the Beverage straight toward the target heading. A bit of direction change to make supporting trees is tolerable. I used the iPhone Compass app to keep me on heading. 

At my location, the terrain slopes a bit. For the NW beverage, after the first 175 feet, the drop-off is quite gradual. 

The NE beverage is another story. Terrain drops about 10 feet in the first 200 feet, but the last 300 feet drops about 80 feet. The beverage terminator ended up in the bottom of a deep ravine. Navigating the slope was quite difficult. Rocks, branches and other debris on the forest floor made for tricky footing. Be careful out there.

Feed Line

I caught a deal on some RG-6. I found 700 feet on a spool for less than $20 at the Dalton, GA hamfest. RG-6 is cheaper than stranded wire. A 500 foot spool is $50 at Home Depot. This 75-ohm coax makes for a good receive antenna feedline. It's cheap, low-loss and easy to match.

Performance

Only have a little experience with these antennas. NE Beverage has been up a month, and the NW Beverage a week. 

Performance is amazing. 

On the 160m Inverted-L, there's typically S4-5 noise. Noise level on the Beverage antennas varies depending on the time of night, but is typically 1-2 S-units lower. 

More importantly, signal levels are stronger. If I watch the Elecraft P3 panadapter, switching from the Inverted-L to one of the Beverages, the noise level drops somewhat, but the signals rise above even more. Sometimes, when there are no visible signals on the Inverted-L, many are Q5 copy on a Beverage.

Further, switching from one Beverage to the other can have a dramatic effect on signals. Sometimes, signals that are strong on one are inaudible on another. Other times, signals are about the same.

In short, the Beverage receive much better than the Inverted-L. During the recent Stew Perry TBDC, I listened on the Beverages almost exclusively. 

They work.