[TowerTalk] HF2V Elevated or On Ground

[Terrence Redding]

As a Novice in 1974 I spent three weeks in a travel trailer with a 
stainless steal roof testing antennas. I was primarily interested in CW 
on 80 and 40 meters, but also used 15 and 10 meters for daily contact 
with various slowspeed CW nets.  I was mostly interested in contacts 
from western New York state to Oklahoma.

I put up a fan dipole at 30 feet as a primary and reference antenna and 
than started experimenting with a based loaded vertical for the 
trailer.  I started with the vertical mounted in water pipe in the yard, 
to a mount on the tongue of the trailer and then the side of the 
trailer.  In all cases the fan dipole was two to four S units stronger 
than the vertical.

Than, I had a metal plate with a flange fabricated that allowed me to 
mount the vertical  in the center of the trailer's metal roof. From that 
mounting point, having a vertical elevated with a good elevated ground 
became the best solution, beating the reference fan dipole by  two and 
three S units.  In some cases, especially on 40 meters, the vertical was 
at 59 + 10 db, while the fan dipole was at S6 to S7.  I was quite 
surprised by the difference.

During the testing, because of changing noise floor, and desire to think 
I was making improvements, I found it easy to think the vertical was 
better on the tongue of the trailer and side of the trailer, until I 
compared it to the fan dipole.  Lesson learned, maintain a reference 
antenna - event a tuner fed long wire.  It will allow you to have a 
backup antenna, and it will help you make better decisions about changes 
to your antenna system.

Terry - W6LMJ


On 11/13/13, 9:12 PM, towertalk-request at contesting.com wrote:
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 19:51:01 -0400
> From: "Mike & Coreen Smith VE9AA"<ve9aa at nbnet.nb.ca>
> To:<towertalk at contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] HF2V Elevated or On Ground
> Message-ID:<000001cee0cb$353ac530$9fb04f90$@nbnet.nb.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"
>
>   
>
> James,
>
>   
>
> I recently installed an HF9V at around 8' AGL.  I use 2 elevated
> "ground"(counterpoise) radials per band, sloping from 8' down to about 5'
> AGL.
>
> I find it works VERY well on 40m and up and adequate on 80m.
>
> Over the past month, I've compared it to a host of other wire antennas at
> similar heights and always found the Butternut to be as good or better
>
> than anything else in the yard here.  I believe the raised radials have less
> loss, but it was twitchy to tune.  An HF2V ought to be a cake-walk to tune.
>
>   
>
> It's just my opinion that using only a few ground radials is lossy and
> that's why everyone preaches ground mounting it. (a lot easier to tune w/
> better/wide 2:1 SWR curves) (I use the term "better", but I don't really
> mean better, but it is better for the match, but I think it's like dumping
> power into the ground to heat worms.)
>
>   
>
> So far I have around 2500 Q's with it, contesting every weekend and I am
> sure it works well , raised up like it is.
>
>   
>
> p.s.- subscribe to the Yahoo group for Butternut antennas and then check the
> files section for "VE9AA" or "AD5X".a couple good ideas
>
> how to get the whole 80m band out of the antenna.
>
>   
>
> YMMV,