Top picture shows the homemade base and ground radials for the vertical antenna. I drilled about fifty holes for radials and four ground rods. Center hole was done with a Hydraulic punch!
Bottom picture is the Butternut antenna in the woods - stealthy!!
I had an opportunity to purchase a used Butternut HF6V vertical antenna from a Ham friend . I aquired it in the spring and had all Spring,Summer and first part of Autumn to think about the installation. This is typical for most of My antenna projects, most other projects are higher priority!
I used a two foot square piece of steel as the base and and prepared it as explained above. Ground rods were driven thru four corner holes in the base mainly for stability. I used copper strap to connect rods to the base and also used strapping at ground side of matching coil at base of antenna. I used stainless steel hardware to attach ground radials by first inserting a two inch bolt from underneath and using lockwashers and nut to secure to base. Enough bolt was thru to attach several radials to each of forty, yes forty radial attachment points. Eventually I had one-hundred and twenty radials attached to the forty outside perimeter bolts!
I cleared a circular area big enough so the antenna wouldn't be blocked too badly by trees. Takeoff angle for DX is important and didn't want vegetation to attenuate the signal too much. Winter will probably be better for using this setup!
I was finally able to install this antenna and found the ground very wet and swampy! Perfect! I was almost able to insert ground rods by hand until last few feet.Antenna was also easy to sink in to the correct depth. I was hoping to have this done by CQ WW DX contest late October but was short on radial count. It received well but didn't appear to be heard very well. Only found out later the first night of the contest conditions were not good! Busy with My Family Saturday and was called into work on Sunday.
Since then I've been able to attach the rest of the radials but not fan out properly thru the trees and brush. Now its snowy and cold out and I'll wait till spring to finish. The antenna seems to work great even with the compromised radials and I'm very pleased with its performance!!
In your photo, it appears you are using a multi-conductor SCSI cable or something. Did you later arrange these in a radial pattern? You're lucky to have that open, woodsy space to get yours up. Anyway, thanks for the good read. I'm inspired by your setup and will do a city lot version soon.
ReplyDeleteBest 73,
Jonathan KC7FYS/7J1AWL
Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteI did use a multiconductor cable in a sheath. I stripped back about 6 feet at both ends and used 4 different cable bundles each about 35-45 feet long. The important thing is to not use twisted pair cable and I'm also lucky this area is wet and swampy most times of the year.Eventually for full effectiveness the sheath needs to be totally removed and all radials fanned out . This vertical performs great and many times beats My wires!
Thanks for your comment and reading My blog!
73--Tim