Beverage Antenna

The Beverage is a travelling-wave antenna: a very long, very low wire, classically used for low-band reception. It is highly directional along the wire.

Configuration

A single straight wire along the azimuth, mounted very low; the height is limited to 3 m regardless of the height setting, reflecting how Beverages are built. Default length 80 m; a length of 0 selects two wavelengths at the operating frequency, and real Beverages are typically one to several wavelengths long.

Characteristics

• Typical gain figure around 8 dBi of directivity along the wire with a very low takeoff angle around 8 degrees.
• As a travelling-wave antenna it is inherently mismatched and lossy as a transmitting antenna: expect a permanently mediocre SWR (around 2.8) and note the high default feedline loss (2 dB). Real stations use Beverages for receive, not transmit.
• Very directive front lobe toward the azimuth heading; point it at the target region.
• Works best over average to poor ground.

When to use

Mostly for experimentation and for simulating receive-style directivity on the low bands. As a transmit antenna it is deliberately inefficient; a Vertical Antenna radiates far better on the same bands.