I am sure there are many biological reason why a human has two ears and only one mouth. However, some poeple chose to interpret this fact as humans are supposed to listen twice as much then they are speaking.
Tuning the Butternut HF2V
Like with any other multi-band vertical the different bands are coupled with each other. This means that modifying the settings on one band will influence the others. This effect is worst on the low bands (40 and below) and less noticeable on the higher bands. If you only have the basic two-band HF2V there are only two bands/parameters to adjust and you can easily get through the alignment by doing a few iterations on each band. However, if you have the 30 or the 160 (or both) extensions mounted, aligning all 3 or 4 bands can become an endless process.
My HF2V is now OTA!
Now that my HF2V was tuned rather well, it was time to test it on the air. I started out on 30 meters where I worked SVØXAO right away. He gave me 589 and I gave him 599. Despite the good reports there was a lots of QRN on the band. This didn’t stop me … Read more
New Strategy for HF2V Tuning
Tuning the 80 meter coil of the HF2V messed up my settings on 40 and 30 meters in a way that I ended up with barely acceptable SWR on all 3 bands. I definitely needed a new tuning strategy.
Tuning the 80m Coil
Now it’s time to adjust the 80 meter coil. The current setting for all three bands are given below
Tuning the 40m Coil
With the current settings on 30m (26cm 2.5 turns shorted), fc on 40 shifted to 7.188 MHz – even with 8 turns shorted. Moving the shorting strap to 7 turns, fc shifts to 6.988 MHz. With 7.5 turns shorted fc = 7.039 MHz.
Tuning the 30m Coil
I have tried to adjust the 30m coil on the HF2V in order to bring the resonance closer to 10.1 MHz. Increasing the length of the coild 17->20 cm did indeed move the cenntre frequency to 9.2 MHz, but going up to 25 cm did not seem to make a big difference; it only moved fc by about 250 kHz.
Butternut HF2V for the 160-30 meter bands
After my DX-88 died in a winter storm, I have decided to give the Butternut HF2V a try. This antenna is a 10 meter long vertical for 80 and 40, with extensions available for the 160 and 30 meter bands. I was rather curious about it since this is the only vertical antenna that provides the four lower bands in one package. Moreover, having used the HF6V previously, I had quite high expectations to this one. Although rather expensive, my success with antenna have been very satisfactory so far. As a bonus it even works well on 15 meter band with flat 1.2 SWR between 20-22 MHz.