The Beverage Antenna is a type of long-wire antenna designed for amateur radio usage, shortwave listening and longwave radio applications. First used in the 1920's and named for its inventor Harold Beverage, it is not a beverage can or beer can antenna.

While these antennas provides good radio-frequency gain and directionality, a large amount of space is required. Beverage antennas are highly directional and physically far too large to be easily rotated so installations may use multiple antennas to provide a choice of orientation.

A wire of at least one or two wavelengths in length (which can easily be as much as a few kilometres for longwave reception) is suspended several feet above ground. A resistive termination at one end is selected to match the (600-ohm typical) characteristic impedance of the antenna and is connected to ground; the radio feed is connected to the opposite end through an impedance-matching transformer. An SWR meter may be used to determine the exact termination to be used for one specific installed antenna.

Many variants use a two-wire design or a sloped design where the centre is further above-ground than the endpoints.

External links

• AA3PX Antenna design page (http://www.qsl.net/aa3px/)
• AMANDX antenna page (http://www.angelfire.com/mb/amandx/bevant.html)
• K1BGW Beverage info collection (http://www.alleged.com/radio/Beverage2/)
• W8JI Beverage antenna construction (http://www.w8ji.com/beverages.htm)
• VE4QRP "baby beverage" antenna (http://www.hard-core-dx.com/nordicdx/antenna/wire/babybev.html)
• Beer can antenna (http://www.ccrane.com/news/beer-can-antennas.08.27.01.aspx)