Re: [IRCA] Beverage - Wellbrook Array Comparisons
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Re: [IRCA] Beverage - Wellbrook Array Comparisons



Rus,

You guys at LBI appear to have had a heck of a good time and gotten some fine DX, despite it being toward the end of the traditional Fall Season. Your question appears to have been how short is too short for a BOG. I have to observe, what difference is there between a BEV, a BOG and a BUG??? Geez, I really don't know in the context of a sandy beach. Its likely determined by how high the water table is right now.... how high has it been recently (as in damp sand) as well as the character and number of intervening bushes, tall grass and small trees that might raise parts of a BOG into the BEV class. I guess that I'm asking partly out of frustration of having carefully put BEVs up on 3' poles on top of a lawn on top of damp or dry sand for about a decade. Finally, one day, I ran one on the ground about 100 feet away from the one on the poles. At Grayland, that day, there was no noticeable difference. I finally quit using poles.... I'm not sure that some of the others ever did use poles.

As far as "how long?" If Kaz is feeling good enough to sit at the computer, he may have differing views, but I'd say that longer is better and straight at the DX is better, until at least 1500 feet. That being said, I've used a 600 foot measured and barely grounded (heck, consider it ungrounded) BOG, right on a mowed lawn, pointing generally at central or Western Australia to DX Downunder for close to 20 years... well, on the ground for the last ten. I've well over 100 DUs QSLed as well as Tuvalu (on a longer BOG) Vanuatu, Tonga, and several other exotic island nations. Would I have heard more DUs or heard them better on a BOG pointed right at eastern Australia and 1500 feet long. Almost certainly. Unfortunately, High Tide and property ownership hits the Grayland at about the 600 to 700 foot mark, so......

I don't know what else to say,

John Bryant
Orcas Island, WA, USA
Winradio G313e and various Ultralights
Wellbrook Phased Array + Superloops





At 04:02 AM 11/10/2009 -0800, you wrote:


--- On Mon, 11/9/09, John H. Bryant <bjohnorcas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>
> So, what is the best antenna for seaside locations? If you
> can solve the liability and ownership problems that abound
> along most coasts, a well-grounded 1400 or 1500 foot long
> Beverage is likely the antenna of choice. If your antenna
> possibilities are any less than that, at all, then the less
> than 200' long Wellbrook Super Array is likely VERY close to
> that long Beverage and clearly a major improvement over the
> ALA-100 Array.
>
>


This is a question we wrestled with at LBI again this year. We had the following:

a - terminated 1000' BOG aimed roughly 35-40 degrees
b - terminated 800' BOG aimed 230-235 degrees
c - a 6' preamplified broadband loop
d - a 16 x 24 ( not sure on dimensions here ) pre-amplified corner fed superloop
e - Wellbrook 1530 single turn loop

We determined that on any given night one antenna might prove to be the star depending on conditions, but that within that, some receptions simply did better with one antenna vs another. This may be as discussed elsewhere in the prior post due to the nature of what signal was available on the other end. It may also depend on what signals are coming in off the sides.

Our conclusion was that despite the physical effort involved in totally burying a BOG in the sand ( needed to keep if from being tripped over or removed on a public beach ) we'll employ at least one BOG going forward.

That begs another question also raised in this thread - the optimum length for a BOG, or more precisely, where is the length beyond which adding more isn't productive. We had determined years earlier that in our case a 1000' antenna was just as good reception-wise as a 1500'. We'll be forced to reduce our South BOG to just under 700' if we use it again as the past 3 years SUV traffic through an entry to the beach has broken it off there. My sense is that if we reduced from 1000' to 700' on the North BOG we'd probably not lose much either...

Russ Edmunds
Blue Bell, PA ( 360' ASL )
[15 mi NNW of Philadelphia]
40:08:45N; 75:16:04W, Grid FN20id
<wb2bjh@xxxxxxxxx>
FM: Yamaha T-80 & Onkyo T-450RDS w/ APS9B @15'
AM: Modified Sony ICF 2010 barefoot




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