[Lowfer] [EXTERNAL] station on 13450khz

[JD]

>>> Excillent! I figured the frequency was too high for a beverage. I will 
>>> have to check that out!

It's actually easier to make a true Beverage at upper MF through at least 
mid-HF than it is at LF.  Most antennas being called Beverages at LF don't 
come close to being a wavelength long, and basically amount to grounded, 
terminated loops...which will certainly receive OK, but  without most of the 
directivity of a true wave antenna.

At HF, one advantage of a Beverage is that it doesn't have to be terribly 
long or even very tall.  Bob Sutton in NZ uses the short fiberglass posts 
that you poke into the ground to set up temporary electric fence runs, for 
instance, and that's what I've got laid out on my farm right now too. 
Certainly works for him!  (Actually, he designed the array as two parallel 
2-wavelength runs spaced half a wavelength apart for the 30 meter band, run 
into a combiner to maximize rejection right off the sides. At 22m, they are 
nearly 3 wavelengths long and spaced at 0.75 lambda, which doesn't suppress 
as strongly at 90 degrees off-axis, but that's not much of an issue with 
Beverages. What the extra relative separation at 22m does is to narrow up 
the main lobe and make the back lobes distinctly skinnier, which are 
advantages in their own right.) Taller supports are OK to an extent, but you 
start to run into impedance transformation issues and other concerns if the 
vertical height becomes more than a few percent of the wavelength.

Some of the best antenna resources online are the Web pages of Charles W8JI 
in west Georgia, and he happens to have quite a bit of practical experience 
with Beverages at HF. (Caution, though--if you believe in magic antennas, or 
explanations of operation based on "pop science" principles rather than real 
physics, expect him to deflate your balloon.) His Beverages tend to run a 
bit taller than Bob's or mine, up into tree branch level, which is fine 
given that his primary interests lie from 160 to 40 meters...but you 
probably won't need or want that much height at 22m. The W8JI Beverage page 
is at: http://www.w8ji.com/beverages.htm

John