Tuning the Butternut HF9V
Posted on June 25, 2012 in Radio
A lot of people say multiband vertical antennas are difficult to tune. I would have to say that when using an actual tuner, the tuning process seemed to be a breeze — at least as much of it as I could accomplish.
In the first article, which describes the installation of the Butternut HF9V in early June, I only managed to do some rudimentary tuning of the antenna after installation. Shortly after erecting it in the back yard, a very large and active thunderstorm rolled in and precluded any further work on the antenna.
At the end of that article, I included a number of photos showing the tuning of the antenna as it was out of the box. Overall, it wasn’t too bad, but could definitely be improved upon.
Over the next two weeks, I managed to improve the ground radial layout and clean up the tuning across most of the bands. Unfortunately, I don’t have a tall free-standing ladder to work from to tune anything higher than the 12m coil — even that is a stretch.