DX Trips and tall stories

DX Trips

DXpeditions have been the major part of my Dxing for the past 15 years or so. Getting away from noise has been the main factor but up until recent times it was also because of the need to use long beverage antennas. I’ve always been an experimenter with antennas. Craig Edwards has called me “The Fiddler” because of my desire to try and tweak things and try something new. I’ve always been looking for that edge in an antenna. The one thing about comparing antennas though with MW is that you never really know if it’s the antenna or conditions.

Foaties Hut at Woodside Beach with Terry Bell

Woodside Beach

Dave Headland and I have tried some interesting antennas over the years. One year at Woodside Beach before we had use of Foatie’s Hut we tried running out a whopping 1400 meter beverage right onto the beach and virtually in parallel we put another out at 550 meters. It was interesting to note that the 550m beverage far out-performed the 1400m one. I suppose the theory is that the longer the antenna the more directional it becomes. And in a true dx sense unless you are targeting one particular station or city in the world then you go for an antenna that is broader. (Have always liked Broads)

Ignore the bird shit like we did. The snakes were the worry. All 12 v DXing here

There are so many factors to take into consideration with beverage antennas. The geography, soil, height of antenna, dips and rises and of course whether there are any other considerations such as electric fences, power lines or power sources in the direction of the antenna. At Woodside we had whacky currents in the ground from the nearby Omega station broadcasting on 13 kHz. I’m sure that must have been doing something to the antenna. I always had the suspicion that it somehow threw the directivity out of whack by a few degrees. It was an interesting place to listen from.



Woodside Beverage antenna. We had to put antenna's up high because of the wildlife and sheep

We have tried running beverages on top of fences and I’ve even tried using barbed wire fences. I’ve tried running antennas high off the ground at 10 meters, I’ve run wires down cliff faces and if it were possible to get a 300m vertical with a weather balloon etc I would have tried that as well. I love playing with antennas and its an important and fun part of the hobby for me.

Dave Headland digging out our earth at Woodside - Rather hopeless earthing actually

These days a lot of the work has been taken out of DXpeditions with the Ewe. The beverages would take quite some time to erect. Making sure that all the poles were straight and the wire not drooping too much. Cattle and wildlife were always a concern in Australia. But the beverage has always remained a favourite of mine. It’s the romantic or spiritual antenna of the dxer even if they are a bugger to reel in.

They call me Big Bev for a reason