Hustler 5-BTV Vertical Antenna

to KA0SOG

Be careful this is ment to help you.. If any radial wires or counterpoise wires for antenna use are buried in the right of way it is your job to locate them. Buried antenna wires electric shocker wires for K-9 , sprinkler systems and any other material are considered foreign material. Responsibility of the property owner. Those that do the locating are contractors, also those that do the digging are also another contractor. Grace period is one foot for markings. If you mark object and you are less than one foot from object the contractor pays you. If you are more than a foot off woops you loose. In your area of Lees Summit MO. more than one phone company exists.. KC)NJA

 

you have to laugh at the "dx engineering" wire radial "kit" at $107.
Thats $107 for some lengths of wire.
oh, they are pre-cut. bargain then

 

No. They work poorly without radials...as all ground mounted verticals will do.

 

I've had a 5-BTV for about 20 years - ground mounted with 25 radials on it. Was never happy with it. It heard things very well, but I would call people during a contest of all things and no one could hear me. I would tweak the thing constantly... get a match... try again... but it still didn't perform as expected. I had to constantly run a tuner with it. When I first installed it on my property, I had brand new coax running to it... albeit the run was longer than I would have liked. I'll be honest, the 5-BTV was one of the biggest reasons why I started losing interest in the hobby. The only mode I could use with any reasonable amount of success was PSK-31.

Then I discovered the Butternut HF-6V. First week I had that up, I worked Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Trinidad, and some guy who was on an island in extreme Northern Canada. This is only my opinion, but if you can afford the cost difference, I think the Butternut verticals are a much better antenna. I had always wanted one but couldn't swing the $350 or so that they cost - the HF-9V is around $499. Then a friend of mine sold me his HF-6V. I had to clean up some parts and replace the 75 ohm stub, but once I got it tuned up (with thirty 25' radials surrounding it), it's almost 1.5:1 or better on ALL of the bands I operate on. This is an antenna almost 25 years old or more. It hears incredibly well although it does tend to be much noisier than the 4 dipoles I have on my property. But with 100 watts coming out of my Kenwood 440 or Yaesu FT-857D, I can get through pile-ups with no difficulty.

Aaron

 

I had a 6BTV many years ago. With about 12 radials cut to the lowes operating frequency it will work pretty well. More radials, better operation but you can get away with 12 or so. When ground mounting a vertical there is no need to cut radials to precisely a quarter wavelength or for each band. Just make them as long as you can and more is always better but at least a quarter wavelength at the lowest band is optimum.

By the way, I prefer butternut antennas but you will still need radials and the same rules apply.

 

I have a 6BTV with 25 radials and it works great - only band I haven't tuned is 80 meters which is ded dead hear anyway. I've worked lots of dx with it as well as stateside, but you gotta gotta gotta put those radials down. I have 2 radials cut to freq for each band with the balance cut for 20 meters which i operate most. No probs tuning it, and like I said, it works great.

 

Electrically short antennas of ANY type, on ANY frequency will have a poor VSWR bandwidth.

A Marconi antenna that is shorter than 1/4 wavelength looks not like a resistor alone, but like a resistor with a capacitor in series with it.

This causes the antenna to have "capacitive reactance", we add the various "loading coils"(inductors) to cancel out this capacitive reactance.

Depending on the length of the antenna, the "Q" of the antenna , AND MOST IMPORTAINTLY the loss in a less than perfect ground system, will determine the VSWR bandwidth of the antenna.

Shorter=more capacitive reactance=narrower bandwidth.
Skinnier radiating element=narrower bandwidth.
Lousy ground system=greater VSWR bandwidth.

A poor ground will dissipate transmitter power in the dirt, The poor ground acts like another resistor in series with the antenna radiation resistance- you will have a lower VSWR, but a POORER radiated signal-just like a dummy load!

All is not lost on 80m- as long as you have a short, low loss feedline, A good ground system, and your transmitter or antenna tuner can adjust out the reactance, you will see little difference in radiated signal between resonance, and say 5:1 VSWR.

Remember, for a given height above earth, a Marconi, (1/4 wave vertical) will have a lower angle of radiation than a Hertz, (1/2 wave dipole). This is especially noticable on antenna that are less than, say, 1 wavelength above ground.

This lower angle of radiation means that the Marconi will be the better DX antenna, and the Hertz will be the better close in antenna.

Often the difference can be as much or even more than going from 100watts to 1500 watts.

Rege