Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Butternut HF5B Butterfly overhaul


Ready for cleaning first
Recently I purchased a second hand HF5B Butternut mini multiband HF beam from PD5JFK Jelle. The beam covers 14-30MHz and is very light. It is a project and needs some work. The antenna construction is a little flimsy and I actually expect it will break after the first storm. However, PB7Z Bernard has this beam for some years now and obtained excellent results in both contesting as DX. We compared DX stations on several bands in the past and it most of the time showed better results against my multiband vertical when it was still up. The multiband vertical wil not go up in the mast anymore so I need a antenna for 20-30MHz since the 2x20m inverted-V works well on 3,5-10MHz but less on the higher frequencies. There are several options of course but I prefer to either refurbish a used antenna or build one from scratch. So far I cleaned everything, removed the rusty hardware and exchanged it for stainless. Modified the mast clamp to fit on 50mm. Now just find the time to set it up for a test on a short mast and hopefully don't have to tune too much...

Rusty bolts had to be removed



Exchanging for stainless (left done, right still rusty)

2 comments:

Hans said...

Hoi Bas, zo dat zijn wel aardig wat roestige bouten en moeren die jij vervangen hebt. Ik hoop dat de schoonmaak actie goede resultaten zal opleveren. Succes! 73 Hans, PE1BVQ

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Hans, 70 bout/moer verbindingen vervangen. Alles zo roestig als wat. Hier en daar ook nog extra klemmen gemaakt. Het viel niet mee. Nu het ding nog in de mast en kijken wat het resultaat is. Qua sterkte heb ik er geen vertrouwen in. Alles is veel te dun en licht gemaakt. Echt voor in een stad met weinig ruimte. Maar goed, we gaan het meemaken...leuk experiment. Kan hem altijd weer verkopen want 2e hands zijn ze weinig te koop. 73, Bas