| WR0F |
Rating:      |
2007-03-14 | |
| Excellent Compromise Antenna |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
For those looking to have a very flexible low profile antenna as to bands with performance this might be the ones for you. We ordered ours about 2 months ago through RANDL.COM and received it less than a week later. Good job guys . Having had a HF6V and HF2V years ago we decided that we would try out a HF9V.
Knowing we couldnt do much untill the spring thaw to put in a ground radial system we put the HF9V together in 2 evenings . No reason to check swr untill spring as we needed to work on the ground radials 1st before finalizing the swr on the bands. Please note GROUND RADIALS not a ground rod .Then the ground rod...for lightning protection
Finally the ground has warmed up enough to accept wire being buried . We installed approx 60 ground radials with the vast majority 32 being 34 ft long for 40 meters and 8 68 ft long for 75/80.
I purchased 2 longer stainless steel bolts to put through the bottom mounting post for hooking up more ground lugs to the bottom portion of antenna for ground radials .I drilled an additional hole throgh bottom post so we could have room for all those ground radial wires to be attached,Cheaper than buying the radial plate I have seen advertized for ground radials.
Finally after all the radials were buried with the wet ground after winter thaw it was time to adjust the bands.
75/80 was just as advertized with bandwidth 60 khz less than 2.1 very narrow .Stretching the Q coil base matching we adjusted antenna to 1.3.1 at resonance. We could have had a 1.1 but than the base coil drastically effected 20 meters . Knowing we like the cw portion we used a sharpie and marked positions on the tubing where the clamp needed to be to move for 3.5 - 4.0 in 100 khz steps. With butterfly nut its easy to loosen and slide up or down the band.
40 meters was 1.9 at 7.000 and 1.1 around 7.125 and back up to 1.9 at 7.300 .Again easy adjustments to move the antenna around from 1 section of band to other by marking positions where clamp would be on the tubing.
Next was checking 20 meters 1.3 across the band. If we adjusted the Q coil for 75 to much than swr resonance on 20 m went up to 1.6 . So we compromised 75 to keep 20 meters down.
30 meters was perfect 1.2 or less .
15 meters we had to shorten the wire to bring it down and than across the band 1.2 or less
10 meters was showing high swr 1.6 and resonance around 29.5 At 1st you think antenna needs to be longer. But than you realize that 12 meters might be effecting 10 . Sure enough 12 meters was showing resonance around 25.2 mhz so we compressed coil and 12 meters fell into place.Then we checked 10 meters and it was 1.3 or less across the entire band.
17 meters was also high in frequency but just compressing the coil brought it down to resonance. 17 m is very touchy and 1/8 inch can move the antenna out of band.With final adjustments it was 1.6 1.1 back to 1.6 in that narrow band
6 meters was perfect at 50.125 .1 MHZ below 2.1
This antenna will do well with the newer rigs that have 6-80 meters and antenna tuner built in.
Now on performance. Their was a dx contest going on last weekend and well on 40 meters we worked 15 stations in less than 1 hour running 100 watts .On 20 if we could hear them we could usually work them. Waiting for band openings for other bands but it works just as well as my HF6V did back in the mid 80's early 90's
Advantages of ground mounted verticals no antenna raising paries are needed and as you get older do you really still want to climb that 60 ft tower to fix the wind damage year after year.
I buried my LMR 400 coax in Plastic pipe from antenna base to the house and years from now I look back and say I am sure glad I have it easily accessible.
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| N8JFX |
Rating:      |
2007-02-05 | |
| Great Preformance |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Had mine for over 3 years and still works flawless. Great reports and can take the brutal "8" Lander weather.Don't even consider any other Vertical...This one works and take 70+mph winds.Great support from Butternut also.
Good planing and patience will pay off with this gem. |
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| WD5EAE |
Rating:  |
2007-01-19 | |
| More for your money and time elsewhere |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I put a Butternut up when I was a kid and the manual was poorly written and poorly illustrated. Thankfully I had an Elmer (an experienced Extra class Elmer) who helped me. His frustration in building it is something I did not forget.
Over 20 years later I was sure the situation would be different so I bought another Butternut. How could it not be improved after so long a time? Well, the manual is still poorly written and poorly illustrated. In fact it looks like the same person put this manual together.
If you try and build this thing and you don't already have some solid experience with this kind of antenna under your belt be prepared for a painful and frustrating project. I ended up building it over some period of days because I would get tired from trying to intuit parts.
The worst thing about building this antenna is that there is a page in the manual showing all the parts. That would be great but then the parts are not drawn to something resembling scale. Some parts are oversized in the illustration. Nor are they drawn with enough detail to determine which part they are talking about in SOME of the steps. None of the parts carry labels. You get plastic bags of hardware which, lacking a natural intuition about what is what, you are left to make guesses, if you are lucky educated guesses. I determined some parts by ruling all others out. Oh joy.
Once it’s built tuning it is not too much trouble given some time. If you build it according to directions you won't have to tune it if you use an antenna tuner, but you really should spend some time with an antenna analyzer tweaking it to get better performance.
Performance is decent. But forget the power rating (my opinion only of course). I added the 160m coil which was no trouble and on low power (under 150 watts) the antenna works fine.
I believe there are better options and better values and better uses of your time. I am replacing my HF9V with a ZeroFive.
I do not know where this antenna is manufactured, but considering how much this antenna costs (especially when you factor in the add-ons) it is, in my opinion, shameful that after all these years the manufacturer/distributor of this thing has not paid a few bucks to get the parts labeled. Barring that, it would not break the bank to get a decent illustration created for the manual, and get someone to revise the text so that the target market of this product is provided with a suitable construction manual.
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| K6YUM |
Rating:      |
2006-12-03 | |
| HF9V - GREAT ANTENNA |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| GREAT ANTENNA. I acquired a used Butternut HF9V off of EBay about a year ago. Assembly was a bit of a chore in that nothing was marked and the instructions were incomplete. Some help from Butternut cleared this problem up. The antenna is immediately next to our garage (1 foot from the roof overhang). It is ground mounted using the small steel pipe that came with it connected by two U-bolts through a treated 2X4 about 2 feet into the ground with 1 ½ feet above ground. I have one 4 foot ground rod at the base of the antenna and 4 ground radials that are 16 feet long buried in the earth that run in a misshaped formation away from the garage with some very abrupt turns. There are also several near by trees much taller than the antenna. I have been able to tune the antenna to where it is very close to a 1:1 SWR on my favourite areas of the bands from 80 through 10 meters. I used an MFJ 962C antenna tuner and my Heathkit SB-200’s SWR meter to check the SWR. The antenna radiates a great signal on all the bands noted though it would probably do much better with some real ground radials under it and a position away from the garage. However, our back yard is a rather small and oddly shaped. Also, we have limiting CCRs to contend with. The present position does conceal the antenna. I am very pleased with the results of the antenna under rather harsh conditions. Butternut did a great job with this antenna. (I also have up a K4POZ screwdriver antenna, with an Icom 706 QRP rig connected, which is about 20 feet away.) |
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| WA8ZWH |
Rating:      |
2006-12-03 | |
| Great product and product support |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I've had my HF9V up for about two months now and I am very satisfied. I have limited space for a radial system so I use the CPK with the antenna mounted up about 8 feet. The results are incredibly good. I get excellent signal reports from almost everyone. We just went through a bit of a windstorm here in northeast Ohio with winds gusting to 50 MPH+ and my HF9V held up beautifully. At one point in my testing and installation I did have to contact Butternut technical support Bob Locher, W9KNI. He was very helpful and stayed with me until my issue was resolved. Good product and engineering. |
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| K3DGR |
Rating:      |
2006-11-24 | |
| Great performance & value... |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
This antenna (HF9v) is great and works as advertised, however to obtain maximum efficiency, you MUST! use a radial ground screen - the larger the better... I have found..
1.I installed a 32 radial ground screen made out of #17 gage electric fence wire, attached to a DX Engineering radial plate, every other radial hole connected (to fit my side yard), terminated in 10-12” nails to hold it down..and added two additional radials 55ft long wrapped around front and rear of house (QTH is in side of a hill)..I connected a small 1 ft long piece of coax braid filled with solder as the ground strap from the matching coil to a “U” bolt on the radial plate, “U” bolt attached to 2ft galvanized pipe in the ground.
2.Assembled the HF9v and set the dimensions as recommended in the instruction manual. The clamps could be shaped better or slightly increased in dimension length for ease of assembly, ..but were OK..Vertical sits about 1 ft above ground level..
3.After assembly and installation on the pipe, I attached the RG8 (50ft) to basement shack and turned on the K2/100..WOW!, ..40M almost blew me away!...
4.I swept the frequency range of each coll, with a Palstar analyzer from the shack, made minor adjustments to the 80m through 20m coils to bring the minimum SWR down to the lower edge of each band (my operation is CW only!)..and tightened the thumb nuts..The initial mfg settings favored the phone segments of the bands..
5.I then proceeded to test each band, and compare results with my 160m doublet-open wire feeder antenna..with results that exceeded my expectation, yielding same or better results with my full size “top band doublet up 30ft...the vertical really hears and you can work all you hear..HB9 from Zurich gave me 599 on 40m, and a 8P9 was acknowledged with first attempt with 50w..The 40m band being the best band (more efficient),30M another solid DX QRP band.. and the antenna is a pleasure to use - will definately be my "main" antenna for general QSO work as well as for low angle DX skip..the best enjoyment is comparing each antenna during an actual QSO and selecting the best one to suit the band conditions for that particular QSO. I rate this HF9v a solid "5" for performance and ease of operation and assembly..You may email me for further information, my bio and email address is on QRZ.com..73' Dave, AA3EJ |
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| K1DX |
Rating:      |
2006-03-21 | |
| Excellent, incl. TBR-160 coil. |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I bought this HF-6V (previous owner upgraded it to the HF-9V0 and 160m option at a flea for $20! I've owned many verticals including the Gap Chal., Hustler 6BTV, R-7, and others.
This antenna has been up for 5+ months and has produced 50+ new countries on 80/75m and 35 on 160m without any major effort. It works well on 40 and 30m, also. I've used it a bit on 20m for contests, but I almost always use a beam on 20-10m.
I have about 40 radials of varying length (most about 60').
Tuning is a small pain using an MFJ analyzer. It would be a major royal pain without the analyzer. But once set (marking settings for 80 and 75m), it is reliable and doesn't move with changes in wetness as the other verticals did.
I get 25kHz coverage on 80m and 8 kHz on 160m w/o using a tuner. With a tuner, I can operate from 1815-1840 with ease running 1kw. Unfortunately, to go from 80 to 75m, I have to re-adjust the 80m coil to positions I marked on the mast.
It's a good antenna, and in my case, it was a super bargan. It's a keeper! I don't have room for a bigger antenna, so I'll stick with this and my TA-53M on a roof mast.
If you are considering the HF-9V, I strongly recommend plenty of radials and an antenna analyzer for tuneup. It's a great small DX antenna, and for me, it is the best DX pileup breaker I've used on 30/40/80/160m.
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| KD4AC |
Rating:  |
2006-01-29 | |
| Flimsy |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| I've had my Butternut HF9V up for four months. Initially, I only had 40 radials and two ground rods at the base of the antenna. SWR and bandwidths, using an MFJ antenna analyzer, were pretty much as advertised for 75, 40, 30, 15 and 6 meters. I guess I could say the same for 20 meters where the SWR was 1.9 to 2.0 across the entire band. However, I could not find a resonant point anywhere for 17, 12 or 10 meters. After adjusting the antenna pretty much all day in the Florida heat and humidity, trying to get it to work on the other bands, I gave up. I decided to wait for cooler weather when I would also add more radials. During that time I worked VK on 40M SSB, in addition to Belgium and Greece on 30M RTTY. Now that it's cooler, I finally got outside and put down more radials for a total of about 100 (I need to count them). Then I decided to try adjusting the antenna again. To my dismay, most of the stainless steel hardware that came with the antenna had rusted. I expected the aluminum sections of the antenna to be oxidized but I wasn't expecting rusted hardware. And in the process of raising and lowering the antenna so many times trying to get the upper bands tuned, the lugs broke off the coil that installs across the feedpoint of the antenna which is necessary for 75/40M operation. I scraped some of the enamel off and installed new lugs but the antenna is pretty much useless... 75M bandwidth is now only 10 KHz, 40M is less than 100 KHz, 30M doesn't work at all and neither do a lot of the upper bands. So, for now, it's nothing more than a receive antenna until I get my SteppIR vertical installed. |
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| JJ7PMSJ |
Rating:      |
2005-07-17 | |
| splended for real DX |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Really I bought HF7V for Japanese users which include 6meter bnd plus HF6V so HF7V.
I add 17meter bnd & 12 meterbands which makes HF9V!. Using more than 2 years,but my QTH is favored with strong winds, sometimes hit by Tyhoon(LIKE hurricane in the USA) . 4 times counterpoises on my second roof top have been broken down. So I decide to set up
tower with 3bands Yagi(BY the way Dr Yagi who developed this ant some70 years ago with Dr Uda
was the professor of the University I grduated from) . Whihle digging the earth with my friend,unforunately water flushed out just 1.5 meter depth. Really FB place for EARTH!!.
And after set up the tower 15 meters high (it is the Maximum height for the ma‚’‚“‚ˆ‚™ land!)
Anyway, I foud my QTH is very good for earth,and
took away HV7V+2=9 ,set it at the ground level.
It did really good job especially on 20 meter band. These days, I have worked with South african,and Midddle east stations. For checking my Yagi, I asked for RS reports for both ANT's.
When I worke with Israer station, he laughed at
and said " your simple antenna does good job 58 and Yagi 55 !!" , yesterday I worked with South african station . He sent 58 for Yagi and gave me the comment ," no difference found for your
vertical!" What ! the expensive tower and Yagi
means less to me !! Anyway Butternut HF9V is means great from the cost/performance point of view! I have yet no chance to try eatable
butternut! Hi! Hi!
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| AB3CX |
Rating:      |
2005-04-25 | |
| I Like It |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I got back on the air after a 33 year layoff and decided to go with a single antenna for all HF bands 80-10 M. After reading many reviews I settled on the HF-9V. I understood from reading many old articles written in QST and by the Butternut folks that the radial system was very important. Having the space to set up a ground radial system with minimum leg lengths of 70 feet was an advantage of my QTH. My comments are several. The antenna itself can be assembled in about 5-6 hours. The manual is OK, but more pictures mixed with the assembly instructions would be useful. The antenna does everything claimed for it. I have it tuned fully on all bands with SWR in range of 1.2-2.0 inr the CW segments. Tuneup requires some patience and back and forth. 30 meters was the trickiest to get right, and I found that hand compression of the coil worked better than sliding the adjustment clamp, but this was no big deal. My Yaesu 1000MP Mark V Field tuner does all the work. I dont need the tuner at all on 40M band. It gives me 1.3-1.5 SWR on 20M, 1.2 SWR on 80M, and 1.5-1.7 on 30M. The higher bands all tune fine, but as expected, the range of tight SWR is not the full band on 15M or 10 M. 12M and 17M are just fine for the entire band.
I agree with those who advocate many radials. I started with copper wire, buried, but moved to steel electric fence wire 14 gauge on top of the ground to save cost. Buy it VERY CHEAP at the Tractor/Farm stores. It solders easily with a Benz propane torch and no lead solder/flux. You will need the torch for copper wire outdoors anyway. To avoid burial, use the trick of wrapping the wire around a pole barn nail 6 inches long every 7-10 feet, and drive it into the ground. This keeps it out of the way of feet and the mower. It is totally unnecessary to bury the wire. Radial length is not critical except longer is better. At the center I placed an 8 foot copper clad ground rod (Home Depot) driven all the way in. Create a loop of heavy copper ground wire (about 8 gauge, Home Depot) for soldering the radials to, screwed securely to the rod with the available clamps. I clamped the copper ground bus to the base of the vertical using two screw clamps, which is much more secure than a smaller wire terminal bolted to the base screw post. Right now I have about 50 radials in place and will add a few more. I am amazed by what I hear on the air. The claims that verticals are noisy seems silly; they are sensitive.
As far as performance, it works great. I am getting heard all over the world, with about 50 countries in the first 2 weeks including Diego Garcia, Mauritius, Australia, Sudan, The European, Carribean and South American guys give me 599 frequently on 40 and 20 meters. I tend to get through the pile-ups on 40 right away. Even on the bands where the big guys have beam antennas and a KW, I get through. I plan to try something more than my 100 Watts; I doubt that with a KW I would even think of a directional antenna. An omnidirectional antenna is cheaper, requires no rotation, and lets you hear everything going on on the band since you are not tuning out signals coming from any direction. I can jump into a new CQ quicker than I guy who has to rotate.
I would recommend this antenna to anyone with the space and the willingness to put down the radials! |
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