Notes on Europe Beverage
February 23 2003
Antenna constructed by W0CG. Feedline buried across street and in yard March 2003.
October 2005
Last 400 feet of wire had been removed. N4RV and W0CG restored it.
January 2007
W8WTS repaired breaks and cleared vegetation.
November 20-21 2007
Total inspection by W0CG. No breaks. Removed two trees approx 4 in. diameter that pinned wire to the ground at about 750 and 900 foot points and at termination. Cut out lots of leafy vegetation including vines wrapped on antenna at about 800 ft. Measured termination resistor -- OK.
11 July 2009
K8LEE, W0CG, and John Shovic inspected entire length. No breaks, only minor trimming needed. Performed well in IARU contest.
October 2010
Full inspection with N8NR. Trimmed some vegetation. All is good.
October 2011
Inspection good -- removed minor vegetation. W0CG and VA7DXC.
23 October 2015
Inspection good. Re-tensioned wire. N4QQ, W0CG, IK7YTT.
18 October 2019
Antenna was dead. Suspected that the gate construction dug up the feedline, but it turned out to be dirty connector at road junction box. Cleaned and all is OK. After gate work is done, I need to final bury the coax tail across the street.
21 October 2021
Inspection with DL8OBQ showed the terminating resistor to be blown to bits. Replaced the next day.
24 February 2022
Hotel construction will eventually have a house on upper lot. Beverage is trespassing on this property by some 40 feet too far west. Excavators will soon rip out the Beverage again. Feedpoint will have to be moved about 60 feet east to be off the hotel property. Also, present buried feedline will be demolished by the road and utility construction, so this must be abandoned. This date installed RG-6 from below the rock face where the new feedpoint will be to the white box, excluding splice and hauling cable to the top. Required 435 foot run from feedpoint to white box in two pieces left over from other RX antenna projects. Antenna wire will be moved from old feedpoint to new feedpoint, spliced at roughly where it heads heads up to the top shelf and then far end will be extended about 40 feet to make up for losses at feed end. Put in splice across road and weatherproofed.
25 February 2022
Hauled feedline up to Ridge, installed 8 x 16 crow's foot and W9XT transformer, connected with conductive grease, and ran in about 200 ft of black #14 wire angling NNW toward existing blue wire Europe Beverage. Connected Spare #2 in road box and in shack. Radio noise sounds good, even without the #14 not quite connected to the remainder of the antenna. Need to replace belay rope with black nylon -- the yellow poly will not last long term. Used 36 feet of cable from top of cliff directly down to the ground below the feedpoint.
27 Feb 2022
Connected #14 black stranded to existing Beverage at about the 375 foot point from original feedpoint. Weatherproofed on Ridge. Project complete.