Homebrew Buddipole vs other antennas

[G8ADD]

@MM0FMF

I made a Buddistick vertical from Bud’s own article. But I SOTA-ised it by minimising everything that would weigh where possible. So instead of whips and being freestanding I use a 5m fishing pole to support assorted wire top sections. I made a loading coil for 20/30m, the elevated counterpoise/radial is made from lighter wire than the top section.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of watching Andy set up and use his Buddistick copy, it went up with surprising speed and sounded pretty lively, so I was inspired to copy his copy but instead of using spade terminals on the coil I am using banana plugs, to short out the coil a plug is taken from its socket and inserted in the top of the other plug. I am now experimenting with two radials, giving the option of either an inverted “T” set-up on one band, or having one radial on each of two bands for more rapid band changing. Andy’s antenna is described here:

Simple 3 band vertical (20m/17m/15m)

The reason for making this antenna was the desire for a vertical (hence DX-ish) antenna that would cover at least 20m that would fit on my 5m fishing pole. A 1/4wave GP wont fit onto a 5m pole as the radials need to slope down at 45degs from the feed, with a 5m radiating section, the 5m pole is too short. Reading assorted reports over the years the common feature was that a few elevated radials seem to have lower loss than laying a few on the ground. If you can bury a huge great mass of wire the…

@KB3UYT

IIRC, the FT-817 starts at 5 watts, but if using the internal batteries, it will be a bit lower

On the internal batteries the FT817 automatically drops to 2.5 Watts, but this can be overridden manually to restore 5 Watts. Andy refers to having measured the output of his 817 as 4.5 watts, mine is a measured 5 watts except on 6 metres where it is just over four watts. This can be adjusted but I have never bothered as the difference is marginal.

Brian