Beverage On The Ground Antenna - Converting my Long Wire to Beverage Antenna

Dr. Harold Beverage was my great great Uncle. His work with transmission was instrumental in the war effort but he would be more proud that people were still talking about the science of his work.

Anxiously awaiting the results of your Beverage conversion!

Looking forward to the next video Cal and the results - good luck bud.

That's looking great Callum. I just wish I had more than 90 feet x 30 feet of back garden space.

Would be cool to see how the on the ground version would work

Good stuff! Have not done the beverage, had a 450 foot long wire, a 60 foot loop on the ground, currently running a g7fek, which has been the best one so far for wide band general receive. I do longwave right on through to 29 mhz, I have a vertical transmit antenna for 26/27/28 mhz. Look forward to more vids on receive antennas for sure!

Great Video as well BTW. Kind Regards, Ray.

Your experiments are awesome! Keep up the great work. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. One of your previous videos has inspired me to attempt a DIY full wave vertically polarized loop antenna for 10m using 14ga stranded cu wire and a small bit of 75-ohm coax for the impedance match. Going to try to join a local 10m net with it. 🤓

I look forward to the outcome

After many months experimenting with a bev, I ended up with a 40m run of wire on the ground, no radials just earth rods, no resistor =omnidirectional, it worked fantastic. I also so made a ant relay which was switched by the radio, so now I tx on the vert, once I stop txing it auto switches to the bev. I also tested a 20m long wire for 40m, it worked well but needed a preamp. 73 zl3xdj.

I always assumed beverages had broadside strength. Something new, everyday!

Hi - I use a Beverage for low noise weak Rx signal QSO UK to ZL. It is 40m long wire at 1m off the ground with 450 Ohm termination R and a 9:1 isolation transformer at the other end feeding about 40m of double shielded 50 Ohm coax up to shack. On the ground was just too little signal and above 1m was too much noise. For me, the best SNR was when coax shield is not grounded at the antenna, but fed by the galvanic isolation transformer.

I have a 14ga. wire beverage about 18-24 inches off the ground and 530ft. long. Running from here in Florida N/NW or 345 Degrees. I used a 4:1 Balun and terminated the far end with a 300 ohm resistor. I works well for Japan and that area. I used fiberglass 3/8" rods about 10 foot apart. But when I do a remote disconnect of the 300 ohm resistor it then receives more toward the UK and VK kand. I am wanting to put 2 more in and use a 120 degree separation on them. But all fed from a remote box from Ameritron I think it is called a RCS-4. And the 4th one will be a vertical for 60 meters. Well that is my plan for this summer anyway. I have 2 towers that are about 120 ft apart that I can run a rope between and use a pulley for the 60M antenna at 44 ft. long with 46' 3" ground radials. 73's de W4DRA

You might like this for receive too. I decided to make a so called random wire antenna with the 9 to 1 transformer I had laying around. I'd like to have 80 meters so I used the customarily utilized 58 feet of radiator and 17 feet of counterpoise. I also used, I am QRP at 10 to 15 watts, for the radiator 3 wire audio, video, shield cable I had 60 feet of. I stripped all three wires at both ends and soldered the 3 at each end together to form a 58 foot stranded wire. I figured if I needed to raise the impedance I could snip one wire at the connection to the transformer turning it into what would be half of a folded dipole thus increasing the impedance by roughly a factor of 4. Rather than initially try to erect this conteaption vertically I sent it out the top of my 1st floor window as a sloper with the counterpoise more or less doing the same thing. This allowed the transformer to remain indoors. I then 1st connected the contraption to my SDR RSP-1A prior to using my Nano VNA. I was not sure what to expect in this configuration, but thought it might be excellent on 40 meters because it was essentially a half wave endfed except that it had its impedance reduced by being just above the ground by inches at its furthest end. Indeed the RSP-1A told me it loved 40 meters, but the Nano VNA told me it was under 1.29 from 6.8 MHz to 7.9 MHz which was my sweep. At 7.15 MHz its 1.22 and the SWR is very flat across the sweep. Boy, I have a 40 meter inverted V but this will beat the pants off it on receive. So, later I will try to get this thing going vertical and see if it does in that configuration give me 80 meters. My other thought is putting a switch on one of the three wires that then turns it into and out of being an element similar to a folded dipole element thus changing its impedance by a multiple of about 4. This later option might give me 80 m too. Anyway, not exactly what I'd like to have but gosh darn its sure nice for receive on 40 meters and I love NVIS anyway. Cheers & de kc2wvb

Just came up with a receive antenna idea. Got a 40m loop antenna with insulated wire on the ground with a 4:1 balum. Have a coax switch next to my operating position. Can switch back and forth. Good SWR protection on my 703 and Roman amp if I forget. Try Good Friday AM. Maybe I will be able to hear you.. Can substitute 9:1 and test long wire later.....

Thanks for the demo, Callum. Some constructive comments: 1. I think you meant "unun", not "balun". 2 The RF impedance of the ground connection, using a simple earth-rod, might well be several hundred Ohm (depending on the frequency-band) so, on the lower HF bands, you might find that a lower-value terminating resistor is better. 3. Several radials will probably give a lower RF resistance. (They would need to be electrical quarter-waves, or odd multiples thereof, of course). They might be advisable, on the lower HF bands, in case the RF resistance, of the ground-rod earth, is higher than the required value of terminating resistance for the Beverage. Hope that helps! 🙂

Experiment! Try it on the ground but also try it 7 feet high too. It would be great if you could build both at the same time and running in the same direction and switch off one and then the other for a comparison. Being that sheep are grazing there, you don't have to leave the 7 foot high one up. But just leave it up long enough to test it out. You could use some sort of an electrical relay to switch back and forth so you wouldn't need more than one coax. Whatever you do, I'll look forward to seeing a video on it. Cheers from the Midwest U.S.

Dx Commander “Enjoy ur Radio” That should be ur bumper sticker

Callum, Great stuff... I am very interested in your results. I am planning my new station at my retirement QTH. We have 15 acres of property in NC we will be building on so I would like to have a couple of Beverages on the ground and a couple of RX loops. I am still planning on building the switch box to phase the small loops on the ground.

I had looked into a beverage and I have the stuff to create one. Everything except the land 😁However, from my research, it was a transformer at the end of the long wire 500 to 1000 feet with a 450 to 600 Ohm non inductive resistor and a ground rod at each the end of the wire. Then a transformer to a 75 Ohm double braided coax back to the shack. The transformer was supposedly the same as I use on my Loop on the Ground as 12 turns to 3 turns. The Loop on the Ground is sometimes referred to as a mini beverage. And the Anan, Flex, Yaesu 101D and Sun SDR DX all have receive antenna inputs with the Anan being the best implementation of it I have seen. I won't buy a base radio without receive only connections.