to 800 Ω. At the other end it is connected to the receiver with a transmission line, through a balun to match the line to the antenna's characteristic impedance. Operation Unlike other wire antennas such as dipole or monopole antennas which act as resonators, with the radio currents traveling in both directions along the element, bouncing back and forth between the ends as standing waves, the Beverage antenna is a traveling wave antenna; the radio frequency current travels in one direction along the wire, in the same direction as the radio waves. The lack of resonance gives it a wider bandwidth than resonant antennas. It receives vertically polarized radio waves, but unlike other vertically polarized antennas it is suspended close to the ground, and requires some resistance in the ground to work. The Beverage antenna relies on "wave tilt" for its operation. At low and medium frequencies, a vertically polarized radio frequency electromagnetic wave traveling close to the surface of the earth with finite ground conductivity sustains a loss that causes the wavefront to "tilt over" at an angle. The electric field is not perpendicular to the ground but at an angle, producing an electric field component parallel to the Earth's surface. If a horizontal wire is suspended close to the Earth and approximately parallel to the wave's direction, the electric field generates an oscillating RF current wave traveling along the wire, propagating in the same direction as the wavefront. The RF currents traveling along the wire add in phase and amplitude throughout the length of the wire, producing maximum signal strength at the far end of the antenna where the receiver is connected. The antenna wire and the ground under it together can be thought of as a "leaky" transmission line which absorbs energy from the radio waves. The velocity of the current waves in the antenna is less than the speed of light due to the ground. The velocity of the wavefront along the wire is also less than the speed of light due to its angle. At a certain angle θmax the two velocities are equal. At this angle the gain of the antenna is maximum, so the radiation pattern has a main lobe at this angle. The angle of the main lobe is where is the length of the antenna wire, is the wavelength. The antenna has a unidirectional reception pattern, because RF signals arriving from