Home > Antennas > Verticals
Vertical Antenna
After using wire anennas for close to 20 years I decided I wanted to try a 'store bought' antenna.
Since I used my wire antennas on multiple bands and had to use an antenna tuner to do that I
thought it would also be nice to have an antenna that I didn't have to tune every time I changed
bands. I know I could have made multi-band dipoles and avoided the tuner, but then you have a lot
of wires to contend with.
For these reasons, and because I wanted to try out a commercially manufactured vertical antenna,
in June 2006 I bought a Hustler 5BTV. The picture on the left shows this antenna installed as a
ground mounted antenna. This is planned as a temporary location as I hope to move the radio room and antennas
sometime in the near future.
The antenna covers 80/40/20/15/10 meters, or at least a portion of those bands. It more or less covers
the whole band except on 80 meters. There it only covers around 30 kHz with an acceptable SWR. Because
I usually have better results when using CW I have the antenna tuned to the low end of the band.
A vertical antenna needs radials to operate efficiently, so I added a number of radials. There are 24 radials total,
and most of them are cut for the higher bands. There are 2 radials each for 80 and 40 meters.
The remainder are cut for the higher three bands, but I don't remember how many are for each band.
In the late fall, winter, and early spring the vertical works better than it does during the dry summer.
I am guessing it is because there is more moisture in the ground during the cool weather, which makes
the radials work more efficiently. I don't know a lot about antennas and the electrical characteristics,
but I assume the moist ground is the reason it works better in cool, damp, weather.
The vertical has performed well, and I have worked countries such as New Zealand on 40 meters. I hope
to give it a better test this fall during the various DX contests. I try to make notes in my log as too which antenna
I was using when I made a contact, but I often forget. In most cases my dipole or 80 meter delta loop
will out perform the vertical, but I only have a dipole for 40/20 meters.
During a DX operation a couple years ago I had worked the group on nearly all the bands that had
propagation. The one notable exception was 160 meters. I didn't have an antenna for 160 meters, and
my 80 meter delta loop just refused to tune up on 160m. Since I had a lot of antenna wire laying around
I decided to make a quickie wire vertical for 160 meter. I cut the vertical wire to a quarter wavelength,
attached one side of the twin lead feedline to that and attached the other side to the radial
system for the 5BVT. It seemed to work pretty good and I did get the station I was after. Since
then I have worked around 50 DXCC entities on 160 meters, without spending a lot of time specifically
chasing entities there. The antenna works well into Europe in the early morning hours their time.
During one of the contest I heard an amazing opening at 1:30 am East Coast time, or 06:30 UTC.
It just goes to show you don't have to have an elaborate antenna to work 160 meters.