[TenTec] Ten Tec and Butternut HF6V Problem And Question

[jerome schatten]

OTAKEBI at aol.com wrote:
> Thanks Stu, I will try what you say.
> I have heard a lot of good stuff on the Force 12 but wow, are they  expensive.
> I have also heard about the bad caps and this weekend will check to see if  I 
> can spot a problem.
> Don't really know what to look for.
> Maybe you can remember from the talk the guy gave.
> I think those caps would hurt 80 and 40 the most if they were bad but I get  
> full output on those bands and a 1.5:1 SWR on the segment that it is tuned  
> for.
> 73,
> Dan/N4VET
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Dan... I can't remember if your BN was ground mounted or not. Mine lived 
atop a 30 foot tower on my sun deck. I think I've had the BN for 20-25 
years as it was one of the first to come out. Every 5-7 years or so I 
had to take it down and replace the phasing line; tighten up the wing 
nuts, clamps, nuts and bolts and retune it a bit. I found that a pain in 
the butt. This year it failed again and realizing that I'm getting on 
and didn't like hanging off the tower any more, I did the following:

1. Took it down and stripped off the coils, the caps, the strapping and 
threw all but one piece of strapping into the garbage.

2. Cleaned all the tubing joints, applied anti-oxidant, installed new 
clamps, and used the strapping to short the two tubes together where the 
coils were.

3. Clamped what used to be the Butternut back to the tower and fed the 
now 30 foot vertical with 450 ohm ladder line against the tower and a 
bunch of not particularly resonant radials that, at the far end are 
bonded to 120 feet of chain link fence. This is the same ground system I 
used with the original BN.

Testing: I have an 80m cf Zepp and an R7 that I've tested the revised 
Butternut against. The Butternut loads fine 160 through 10 (and of 
course anywhere in between). The Jupiter reports 1:1 SWR after proper 
adjustment of the Dentron tuner. Extensive A/B/C tests on 40/30/20/17 
showed the following (separate tuners for each antenna):

1. On long haul stuff (>1200 miles or so) the new BN configuration was 
better than the R7 by at least 6db, and almost always better than the 
Zepp by almost 12db. At the worst the Zepp, R7 and the BN were about equal.

2. On shorter stuff, it was very hard to tell, except that the R7 was 
usually the poorest. So much was dependent on time of day, band, condx, 
etc. That is to say, one second the BN was better, and then next the 
Zepp was. Bands have been too poor to say much about results higher than 
on 17.

My general impression is that the new BN is at least as good as the old 
one, still acts as a vertical, and should give far less trouble over 
time. It's a bit of a bear to tune sometimes but still seems like a 
reasonable trade off.

Jerome - VA7VV