Antenna construction
My Butternut HF6V is
mounted on the roof top of my two story home. The home is located on a
small hill with almost 360 degree free view of the suroundings.
I constructed a tilt mechanism out of scrap
metal materials found in the garage, this allows me easier access to the
vertical antenna for maintenance, tuning and repairs. Photo below.
The two photo's on the right shows the HF vertical antenna tilted down and lying flat on the roof from south and north view. Antenna construct
Butternut HF6V antenna
The tuning of this antenna is a bit challenging while the
instruction are almost good for an US product. As with all multiband antennas
you work your way through the tunning steps to discover that there is some
feedback loop happening, as the first tuned band had moved. So all a bit tricky, that’s why some of the
best SWR are just below the band, I simply had enough after 2h baking on the
roof top in the sun, a compromise. Maybe
in the future I might try to pull the lower bands up again.
Interestingly while the antenna is build as a 6 band HF
vertical (40m, 30m, 20m, 15m and 10m) I am also able to tune it to 12m and 17m
which is beyond my expectations, it actually works well there.
Butternut developed a unique radial system for roof mounted
antennas which is based on a 300Ohm twin lead antenna cable, cut at some pre
defined points. It all works surprisingly well, maybe due to the lack of a
direct comparison.
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Butternut HF6V vertical antenna
repair
The Butternut
HF6V is a 6 band vertical antenna, without traps. It uses large coils and
capacitor to accommodate the 6 HF bands 80m, 40m 30m, 20m, 15m and 10m.
In my case it also operates reasonably on 12m
and 17m with the help of an antenna tuner.
I installed the
antenna in 2021 in its current installation, after I owned the antenna since
2015, besides the occasional installation in the backyard it spent most of its
time in storage until now.
The Butternut
HF6V is installed on top of my two-story home and my QTH is located on a small
hill, therefore the antenna experiences frequent strong wind gusts.
I also guyed the antenna over the 30m coil as
recommended by Butternut.
Somewhere
around mid January 2024, I noticed a sudden worsening of the SWR for the 20m
and 30m band, other bands had a moved resonance frequency.
This was initially intermittent with good and
bad days until the end a complete failure of the 20m and 30m band.
Based on the
build of the Butternut HF6V
my suspicion
fell immediately on the 30m assembly of the antenna which influenced the 20m
and 30m band.
I posted a description of
my problem in the forum of
eHAM.COM and
got a lot of good replies which lead me to believe that the culprit is very
likely the 68pf doorknob capacitor of the 30m assembly.
Unfortunately
the cost of the original 67pF doorknob capacitor imported from the US would
almost have been 200$ AUD, luckily I found a supplier in the Ukraine
specializing on such items and I purchased two
68pF doorknob capacitors for 50$ AUD shipped within 2 weeks.
You can read my antenna repair by downloading the PDF press the button below.
Butternut Antenna Repair PDF
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40m Delta Loop
Recently I finalized a full size 40m Delta Loop Antenna in my backyard. The antenna is mounted between two re-purposed flag poles and the roof antenna mast, fully horizontal.
It works very well on 40m mostly local VK and ZL traffic, for DX the vertical antenna seems to be still better. The Delta Loop functions also on 20m ,15m and 10m with the same characteristics as for 40m.
Picture to the left shows one of the flag poles