Hi Steve, The answer is "it depends"
Beverage performance is ideal over poorly conducting soil and extremely poor over highly conductive soil. In extreme cases. poorly conductive soil creates a problem with establishing a stable and reasonably low ground resistance at the feed point and at the resistive termination. I was involved in operations of a massive array of 64 phased Beverages installed (inland) on an island that is solid rock and a very thin layer of topsoil. Ground rods were impossible. We used a chicken wire mat at each end of the Beverages (similar to NC0B's use of chicken wire on his verticals). The Beverages worked perfectly and all 64 had nearly identical feed point impedance. We purchased two miles of chicken wire from Sears! The problems with using a single short ground rod is that its ground resistance is a significant fraction of the 450 termination resistance of a Beverage and its resistance varies with soil moisture content. That's not a serious problem for a single Beverage, but its a big problem for a phased array of Beverages. My 8-circle passive receiving phased arrays are installed in a uplands wetland. But the wetland sometimes dries out during a drought. Instead of using a ground rod for each vertical I use eight 65 foot wires laid on the surface of the ground. Perfect! Short radials should be just as effective with a Beverage. 73 Frank W3LPL ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve" <[email protected]> To: "topband" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, March 8, 2024 4:32:21 PM Subject: Topband: DXpedition Beverage Termination Grounding Schemes?? When on a DXpedition, and Beverages are quickly tossed and laid out within several hours, how is the termination resistor "grounded" at the far end, and the transformer at the near end; with counterpoises, ground rods, or what? And with either of those, how long and how many wires for the counterpoises, and/or how many and how long the ground rod?? I've seen photos of expeditioners laying out Beverage wire through, over and under thickets full of brambles and thorny bushes; but never have I seen them laying out counterpoises or pounding in ground rods. Curious Steve, K0XP _________________ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector _________________ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector
