OZ9AEC

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.

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!

You should also consult the assembly instructions to know where to mount what, e.g. the coax cable must be moved when adding the 160m kit. These are available here.

Click on the images below to get a high resolution version.

The complete antenna for reference.

The 80m, 40m and 30m kits.

The 160m kit.

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.

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.

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.