moved butternut vert to rooftop...

[N2DTS]

Took it out of the ground and put it on the roof.
Its the 80 and 40 meter version, 40 feet tall.
Ran some radials and hooked it up with some rg214, and it sucks big time.
No better then when it was in the ground.

Plus, it looks really crazy up there, 40 foot tall thing with big coils on it, I think it looks good, the xyl does not....

On RX, signals are 10 db down over the dipoles, a few broadcast stations on 40 meters were almost as strong as the dipole.
On 80, everything is way down.

It comes down and goes to a hamfest.....

Brett

[N3WWL]

the xyl doesnt like the looks of it on the roof?
why not?   

[KB2WIG]

the xyl doesnt like the looks of it on the roof?
why not?   

Probably she can see it more clearly without trees and shrubs in the way.... ..

klc

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

What did you expect? It's a Butternut.

Seriously, from the limted data you posted, it seems like it's working fine. Local signals will be down on any vertical compared to a dipole. That's the nature of the radiatio patterns - verticals have a null at the higher angles; dipoles, especially lower ones, have their best response at high angles. You could put a 1000 radials under a vertical and this will not change.

The fact that the BC stations, which are coming in at the lower angles, were stronger on the vertical, shows that the response is proper. That said, unless you are intersted in working DX or want to do some polarization diversity reception, you're probably better off selling it. Just replace it with a nice 40 foot mast on your roof and put some antennas on it. You wife will like this much better.

[ka3zlr]

One of my Monitoring antennas is a double bazooka hung in the sloper fashion.


73
Jack.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

It's had to believe your XYL didn't like the looks of it. My XYL loved the 50 foot telescoping mast in the middle of our roof with three inverted vees hanging from it and nine guy wires. Loved it even more, when during a bad ice and wind storm in January several years ago, it buckled in two sections after two guy wires snapped, and the top 6 inches impaled the roof. More love abounded when she informed me, as I was climbing up on the ice caked roof, that my life insurance payment was already sent in earlier in the month.

[N2DTS]

No, I had said the some of the broadcast stations were almost as strong as the dipole, not stronger.

Yes, the wife....
Maybe its not the right color and clashes with the house, I dont know.
I think it adds something to the house, a bit of a geek quality, it screams 'this ant no cb antenna' and the coils (slightly bent up) look impressive.

A looooong time ago when I lived at my parents house, I had a 15 meter mono band beam up on the chimney.
That was ok but I took it down and put up a dipole between a tree in the front yard and a 40 foot telescopic mast in the back yard.
I put another 40 foot mast on the chimney.....
First good storm and the tree pulled the entire chimney over, along with the mast in the back yard!

My dad was pissed!

Brett

[KD6VXI]

First good storm and the tree pulled the entire chimney over, along with the mast in the back yard!

My dad was pissed!

Brett

Hope you learned about cantilever and dead man drops


--Shane

[Pete, WA2CWA]

To some degree, I'm happy my son became a ham after he got married and moved into his own home. I remember all the crazy antennas I tried when I first became a ham.

[N2DTS]

Yes, my parents were great, they put up with a lot.
Not the least was the anger of some of the people close to me who heard me loudly in their phones and other equipment, the FCC visits, the wires all over, holes in the house, massive amounts of radio equipment, strange noises from my room all hours of day and nite, visits by strange looking 'radio people' etc, and we wont even get into the motorcycle thing...

Brett

[ka3zlr]

I mainly listened alot bootleged once in a while..

Why would you want to put a butternut on the roof I thought those things were for ground mounts.


73
Jack.

[N2DTS]

Just to try something different.
The ground in South Jersey is just sand, and likely very poor, and I did not have a lot of radials, and the trees grew into the antenna, so something had to be done with it.
I thought high would be better, get it up above some of the houses and trees around, but on receive it does not work a bit better.

Brett

[ke7trp]

We have a local with a Buttercup.  IN 2 years he has beat me twice in signal. I have an extended Zep up with open wire line. Most of the time he is 10 to 20DB down.  He runs 400watts of carrier, I run 200 to 350 depending on the rig I am using.

I was all set to install my Big Battle ship Vertical. Its 66ft tall with a 300lb ceramic insulator mount. I just dont think its going to be worth the effort.

C

[N2DTS]

My guess would be not.
Maybe if you want to do DX, which I don't do, it would work well.

WA3JVJ (Bruce) used to run a bent up dipole and a globe king 400, his dipole was a U, fed at the bottom, legs going into his back yard.
He got the house sided, and (had to?) take down the dipole and put up a butternut.
He has not been on the air since (its been 25 years!).

A very sad tale...

Brett

[N3DRB The Derb]

i did very well with a HF 6V on slopbucket DX in the early 80's. worked VK/ZL and other area countries on 75, but it was crap for anything closer than about 1200 miles in. thats just what a vertical does, low angle sux for AM.

[W2PHL]

I wouldn't write off verticals as a rule. I think these commercial (butterball et al) multi-band contraptions give the good ole vertical a bad name. For 40 I'm using (when I have time to be on the air) a 33' rooftop vertical. Solid #12 wire in a 31' foot fiberglass telescopic pole (Jackite brand)with a couple of 4' fiberglass military style tent poles underneath for mounting. Four 34' elevated radials. Feeding it with RG-213 and a coax balun. It has proven to be consistently superior to the 40m inverted v I had up at around 35'. The inverted v would work better if it had more height but that's not an option here. I'm on a 22"x110" city lot and the house already looks like moon base alpha. It is strictly a mono-band antenna, a resonant 1/4 wave with no lossy traps. Works great and cheap to build too. 

[N2DTS]

Have you seen a butternut vert?
Its 40 feet tall, has no traps, big heavy duty coils, big 15kv transmitting type caps.

Yes, it should be down a little on 80 meters as its only 40 feet tall, but on 40 it should be good as its full size.

I would think it is one of the best antenna's of its type, its good for full power AM which can not be said about any other vert I think....

Anyway, it sold at the fest yesterday, and I managed to get the 40-10 dipole up another 20 feet using that heavy duty fiberglass mast section stuff.
I have five 4 foot sections up now, and hope to get at least one more section in, it gets hard to hold the upper ones while inserting the next section....

Brett