First HF2V Measurements with the miniVNA

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have bought a miniVNA antenna analyser and I have now done the first meanurements on the HF2V.

Installation of the miniVNA was very easy. The accompaning wintendo software runs all right. It is fast and runs continuously so you can even do real-time adjustments on the antenna. I have not tried it though. Howeverm I find it somehow silly that there is no horizontal scale – maybe the 3rd party Linux software is better.

Here are the scans I obtained on the HF2V with the parameters L80=36cm L40=26cm and L30=17.5cm:

Butternut HF2V SWR on 80 meter 2007.02.18

Butternut HF2V SWR on 40 meter 2007.02.18

Butternut HF2V SWR on 30 meter 2007.02.18

A scan over the entire HF revealed something very interesting: there is good resonance on 15 meters too!

Butternut HF2V SWR on HF 2007.02.18

Butternut HF2V SWR on 15 meter between 20 and 22 MHz 2007.02.18

So, except on 40 and 15, the SWR is rather bad. However, I did manage to make a few good contacts on 80 including F, US5, and EA7. 40 was impossible due to some contest; there were strong CW stations all over the band – even the SSB segment!

Tomorrow morning I will get up just before sunrise (06h30) and see what I can do on 40 and 15. Later on I will tune the coils to have good SWR on all bands. I will start wil the 30 meter coils since that is supposed to have influence on the other bands as well.