[Antennas] Help on 5-BTV radials

Sat Oct 8 23:18:38 EDT 2005

If you check out W4RNL's web site, you will find that all the talk about the
need of two radials PER band is a bunch of bull on elevated verticals...I
used a multiband vertical with the base 20ft off the ground and ran four 60
ft radials period..worked like a champ on 80-10m and the antenna met or
exceeded factory SWR bandwidth specs...but you MUST run radials of some
kind..the recommended length is 1/4wl at the lowest freq of operation (75m
in your case so 60-70ft)
www.cebik.com is W4RNL's site....check out his page on antennas...it is
RECOMMENDED reading for all ;)
As for your other questions, the 75/80m freq is your choice...do you intend
to operate SSB or CW? If SSB, I would look at the segment you want to use
most of the time...since most 80m short verticals have less than 100kHz b/w,
you could go with say 3900 if you have a tuner...Opps, you said you
didn't...Well 3900 is a good center choice....at the outside edges, the rig
will still xmit ok up to a 3:1 SWR (at which it is folded back to 1/2 power
so that's less than 1/2 a S unit on the other end difference!) With your
power being 100watts, you should have NO issues with the antenna, etc.
Chris
WB5ITT
> -----Original Message-----
> From: antennas-bounces at mailman.qth.net 
> [mailto:antennas-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Cesar Gamez
> Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 12:41 AM
> To: antennas at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Antennas] Help on 5-BTV radials
>> Hi,
> I'm new into ham radio, although done CB DX'ing some years 
> ago (70's & 80's).
> Hope somebody can give me some hints or help.
> I've finally decided to put up a 5-BTV Hustler Vertical 
> (resonator tuned) antenna on my base. I've just got the 
> antenna and planning to set it up next weekend.
> The antenna will lie on top of a 12 meter mast, sitting on my 
> roof (2 stories high).
> The antenna manual clearly specifies putting up radials (2 
> for each band minimum); but these are extremely long on the 
> low freq. bands and since I'm in a pretty small footprint 
> house in a residential area, I'm not sure what options I may have.
> My questions/ideas are:
> 1. No radials: the mast is not planned to be grounded, I'm 
> afraid of severe intereference at home and neighbors, even if 
> using the ugly 1:1 balun recommendation.
> 2. Attach 10m band radials (shortest, about 8 feet long): I 
> will be using a lot the antenna on 10m band locally, up to 
> 100km distance radius max., although I'm also interested in 
> the DX use. I'm wondering if the 10m will help the multiples 
> (20m, 40m and 80m bands) at all.
> 3. What frequency on 80m should I tune the antenna (for a 
> newbie, like me?) apparently the resonator has a tight 
> tolerance on this.
> 4. What is the max. recommended SWR for safe transmission 
> without burning the equipment? I don't have a tuner, just a 
> SWR meter and will transmit max.
> 100W.
> Thanks for your help.
> Regards, Cesar.