Two recordings I made during the 2011 CQ WW CW contest showing how well the Butternut HF2V receives on the 21 and 28 MHz bands. The videos were recorded using the Funcube Dongle equipped with the HF converter kit and my GNU Radio based software defined radio receiver, GQRX.
Tag: HF2V
My HF2V during winter 2010/2011
I took a few photos of my Butternut HF2V vertical antenna during my winter holidays 2010/2011. You can click on the images to get higher resolution photos. Enjoy!
The Butternut HF2V antenna after three years
More than three years ago that I have mounted my Butternut HF2V multi-band vertical antenna outside and left it suffer from the windy and humid Danish climate. The settings and performance that I could achieve back then are documented in several blog posts, e.g.Tuning the Butternut HF2V.
What has happened with the Butternut HF2V since then? Well, nothing really… During these three years, the antenna has been standing and performing very well without any need for fixing or tuning it. I have done a visual inspection and tightened the guy ropes every now and then, but that’s all. In order to document it I have taken a few photos and made some SWR scans.
Continue reading “The Butternut HF2V antenna after three years”
Do it yourself HF2V
Often I receive emails from people asking for the dimensions of the HF2V elements because they want to build one themselves. Well, here are the dimensions for all the coils and capacitors. Good luck with your experiments! Continue reading “Do it yourself HF2V”
HF2V on the Air
As you can see on my HF2V pictures, my HF2V is mounted in between a lot of trees. There is even electric fence only 10 meters from it. Nevertheless, it performs very well both on the RX and TX side. It has also been standing for more than a year now and can cope well with the winds on the Danish west coast.
Lucky DX, again…
I don’t know how it happens, but very often I find myselv being on the right frequency at the right time. The right time means when a DX station starts calling but before the crowd begins shouting.
Pile-Up on Me
Finally, an evening without any significant QRN on 40! I was doing pretty well, working UA9O, UN9, 4L1, when suddenly there started to be a small pile-up on me.
Listen Twice as much as You Speak
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 and the HF2V to work VO1TK who was using an IC-735 and a dipole. Not bad.
Later on I worked many more contacts, including TU2 and VP5 on 40, and OY3 and CN2 on 80. The HF2V is doing very well!