Disassembling my old Beverage farm

Dave Mueller

We finally got a break in the rain, so I had an opportunity to go back up to my old former QTH and finish removing the six Beverages I had in the jungle there. It’s really a shame to have to take everything down after all the hard work I invested putting them up, but I can reuse the wire, feed point transformers, and even the termination resistors. Due to all the rain, I was able to recover quite a few ground rods as well.

The wind we got last week definitely changed the appearance of the jungle up north. Many branches were down, and the ground was covered with fresh leaves. All my remaining Beverages were felled by trees, with the exception of my trusty EU/JA wire. It survived three years without breaking, even though a tree had fallen on it last week.

It is hard to see in the image, but this is a pandanas tree that fell across one of my Beverages.

I dare say that my former EU/AS Beverage was “magical” – very quiet with excellent performance. I will reinstall this wire as my new EU/AS Beverage here at my new QTH. Hopefully it performs just as well!

Beverage wire and ground rods gathered up and ready to be relocated
I still find random WW2 Japanese beer bottles in the area. This Kirin bottle was sitting under one of my wires. I only found it now after three years, after the wind blew away some ground cover. This area was used as a ranch and was occupied first by Japanese soldiers and later by Marines.
Kind of sad – my old QTH – all empty.

I still have a lot of work to do at the new QTH – the feed and termination of the NA Beverage, to make a path and install the new EU/JA Beverage, and to run almost 1500ft of RG6 coax.