Testing some recently installed beverages antenna against a dipole.
The QTH here is fairly quiet and on the whole I have found the dipole is a fairly good antenna to receive with. However A/B testing the two against each other I learned a few things.
Firstly just how good a simple, low dipole can be. How well the beverage can receive signals off the main lobe compared to the dipole.
For referece the dipole is res on 80m at 30 feet height.
The bevaege is 500ft long at approx 6ft. Pointing 300 deg, north west towards NA.
I setup two radios with each antenna and two laptops running WSTJ-X. Reporting each of the spots as M0BEW [Bev] and M0BEW2 [Dipole]. This allows to check the history of spots against each other over a twelve hour period between 23:00 and 11:00 on 06/03/2019.
It's not a completely scientific experiment but something at least.
12 Hour period [23:00-11:00]. 300deg Beverage. World. [1216 heard]
12 Hour period [23:00-11:00]. Dipole. World. [953 heard]
The beverage certainly decodes more than the dipole. 1216 compared to 953. The majority from the North West as to be expected, with some from other directions such as SA and AF directly in from the rear.
12 Hour period [23:00-11:00]. 300deg Beverage. NA.
12 Hour period [23:00-11:00]. 300deg Dipole. NA.
A close up image of NA. Clearly a big difference on the East Coast and hearing into the next layer going into the Mid and furthur into the West.
12 Hour period [23:00-11:00]. 300deg Beverage. EU.
12 Hour period [23:00-11:00]. 300deg Dipole. EU.
Comparison of Europe. Intrestingly even with the F/B of the beverage onto Europe it still hears pretty much everything the dipole does and a few more. So I can have a certain degree of confidence that when listening out on the bev I'm not deaf to the East, Albeit with much lower signals.
Summary.
This test was run during a normal week night during quite normal band condidtions. You can imagine how more prononced this will be during a busy conetst weekend.
During use comparing the two, the beverage is much less tiring antenna to use.Even for general use running Europe. The increase in receiving performance puts me into an area where I receive higher power runners from the North West that simply do not hear me some of the time.
I also have the same length beverage running 120 deg South East.
Doing A/B tests between the two beverages certianly show a degree of F/B [on lower angle signals], however I havn't done the above test with it yet.
Overall so far the system is working well.
Next job is it put in the 30 deg and 240 deg beverages.
Tim M0BEW.
No comments:
Post a Comment