You long time hams probably know this. Feel free to laugh at me. FNG mistake. I realized, eventually, what I did. So for you new guys, don't do what I did.

I bought a vertical to go along with my wire. I went with this after lots of good reviews and having been around forever.

Got it all installed. Set the base "tuning" lengths. SWRs were awful. Like 10 and high. 80 was as high as 60. I didn't know what the hell I did. Went over instructions. Over and over again. Tried stuff anyway. No luck. I was looking over details in hindsight and you'll read why.

Ignorant of how verticals operate. I did some research. And the light bulb came on.  

Through my ignorance. I basically just grounded the damn thing. I used u bolts on the element itself to mount to a metal bracket to a metal pole. Nothing I was gonna do was going to make this work.

So I reworked my mount. Voila. Other than needing more adjustment on the traps, it's working. 80 is still pretty high, but no biggie there. I'm sure it'll line out.

If they were willing to admit it, every ham the builds or installs HF stuff has done some stuff....

Watch for wet grass or weeds growing up under the coax connection at the base and shorting it out, BTDT. The instructions call for 4" above the ground surface, so it doesn't take very tall grass to do it.

80 m is very narrow, no matter what.

With a tuner can work all of 6,10,20,30,40..and most of 80. Enjoy..

I also painted mine camoflage, copied Derek45's 6BTV.

Whatever my fan dipole doesn't cover the Hustler does...with aplomb.

Radials, radials, radials.

I'm laughing but... in my 67 years of hamming I've pulled some doozies.
*Swapping the filament and B+ leads on a transmitter.
*Dropping an 813 onto the floor.
*Running late bringing the generator to Field Day and getting lost.
*Checking out a 750 Volt power supply, resting it upside down in my lap and trying to tighten the connection on a filter capacitor with uninsulated pliers. The problem was the bleeder resistor had opened up.
*Sitting down on a 200 Watt American Beauty soldering iron -- in polyester pants.

I have a bunch cut. Have 20 already down. Prepared to do more if needed.

I did mine up a bit. Not a lot. But I shouldn't have the grass issue.

80 isn't resonant anywhere right. Not even close. But everything else is right around 2.5-3:1. So I have some more adjusting to do. But honestly I only use 80 for regional stuff and my wire can do that no issue.

Did you cut your 80m antenna?  If not it is likely way too long.  

There are instructions to do so in the DXE manuals.  

I cut mine,....several times to get it to be resonant and centered where I wanted it using a Rig Expert.  A second new wire stick for 75 or 80m was always in my head to swap out when I got ready to get a move into CW.  (and so is a 75/80m home made fan dipole)

My worry is when I add some more radials I might have to change it again.  I have been terribly slow getting it all done.   My radials are only the 16 that the kit supplied enough wire for.  I still have to finish up the rest I want and fix the conduit trench back fill, and top dress the whole field and trnch and reseed.  

I will say I am not unhappy with the 16 radials so far.


My set up is the Hustler 5-BTV, (i did try to change it to the 6 but my 5 was shipped sooner than they said it would be restocked).  I got the flat plate fold down kit with the DXE radial plate.  With the fold down kit, not only can I just lay her down for a storm event, it makes it semi convenient to tune.  I only had it up and down for the tube trap tuning about three times using my Rig Expert and checking it on the Icom7300 itself.  The 80m stick tuning at the tip was probably half a dozen up and downs, walking back to the garage to cut the wire on the grinder, reinstall and the shack to check it out.  (I lacked a shorter coax so I was checking at the radio end of the coax

)

+1000

the radials are half the antenna


take your time and do it right.

.

I did trim it. But I have to finish tuning the rest of the traps before I go back to that. I never got that far. Once I found my issue, I fixed that to verify I at least had it to where it's tunable then it got dark. If the weather relents some I'll work on it some more. It's been a work on it when I can project anyway. Learning and adjusting along the way.

use the DX Eningeering installation PDF

lay down all the radials first

i used 24ga, buried a few inches under the yard

i did it with a flat spade shovel in the rain....when the yard is gooey wet

then tune each trap, starting at the bottom and working your way up, .....from 10meters to 80

take your time and do it right

your reward will be lots of DX and little to no need for a tuner

.

+1


Everywhere I read said to use the DX Engineering guide on tuning the Hustlers.  They start on the traps on the bottom and work up and Hustler did it top down.  I believe you get much closer, earlier with less going back with the much later developed DXE method.  




You can find the instruction pdf free at dxe.

https://static.dxengineering.com/global/images/instructions/dxe-btv-inst-ins_oh.pdf

No mine is resonant, happens to be 1:1 at 3.555 (I put it together based on the measurements between poles in the assembly instructions.) Which is perfect for working slower CW. It's 3:1 or better from 3.5 to 3.700 MHz.


Forgot to mention it's 2:1 or better across 15 meters.

I forgot to put the word now. Mine is not tuned yet. It was just a preliminary check to see if it fixed the grounding issue.

When trying to tune it keep in mind that higher bands affects all lower bands, so you have to do them in sequence starting with the highest band (10m).

An analyzer makes things 87 times easier.

Radials can and do change things so get your radials at least somewhat close to what you intend to do before tuning.

Oof, I hope its not too much, I have 16 radials down now and was going to make up some more,   I was stripping 60 feet of UB wire today for the conductors to make up some more.

Yeah that's what I've read. I got 10m done 15 mostly done. Then ran out of light. It will useable on all bands with a tuner right now. So I'm messing around with it right now.

Yes they do make life easier.

I put 20 down

Take your time and do it right.

Don't half-ass it, and try and run it with a tuner.

.

No intentions of half assing anything. I have a 1 year old and a wife that works every other weekend along with working 60ish hours a week myself. Unfortunately. I run out of time when trying to do stuff. So it takes me time to finish some projects. There is zero need to come across as condescending.

I only wanted to see how it did. Going to finish it when I have time. Hopefully today.

@ManiacRat461

apologies if I sounded condescending

I'm just trying to encourage you to set it up correctly

I am no stranger to being short of time due to work and family.

.

No problem. I don't hold grudges or anything.

Believe me, I have every intention of setting it up right. I've been out as much as I can in the afternoons and evenings tinkering with it, for about two weeks now.

Question for those with experience. 10m is below 2, but not a lot. Maybe 1.98. I adjusted the trap and up and down, it's all I could get. 15, 20 and 30 is damn near flat with the ends maybe around 1.7. I cannot get 40 to get below 2.5. Nothing I do is changing the SWR. I need it to go shorter to improve the resonance. But I run out, the 40m tube is on top of the 30m trap. Which I imagine is not right.

Some things. All of my radials are 20', besides 4 which are 32' 4" for 40. I have not laid out any 80m radials yet. I'm waiting on the wire. Now the deal with my radials is they are attached to the mount. Which means about 4' of the end is angled up from the ground to the bottom of the mount. If someone needs pics, I can take one. I'm theorizing that maybe even thought my radials is literally 32'4" as per the directions, because 4' of it is in the air, it isn't doing it's job. Any thoughts on this? I don't know what else it could at this point. Everything else is spectacular to acceptable except 40m. I stopped there today since I could get it any better. For what it's worth the cw portion of the band is fair to good.

Your radials lengths are off. 20' is the correct length for 40 meters, and would be essentially a full wavelength at 10 meters which might be why it's giving you trouble. Try putting 2 to 4 of about 5 feet and see if that doesn't help your 10 meters. 2 to 4 of 10 feet should help 20 meters. (yes radials on the ground should only be about 60~66% of the free space 1/4 wavelength).

Ok I'll try that. Thanks.

All of my radials were 20'. 10 and 40 wouldn't tune. So I added length to 4 of them to 32' per the directions and cut two to 8' per directions. 10 still isn't tuning and I haven't gone back to 40 yet. But I'll cut to 5' and see what 10 does.

While I am still a babe in the woods I am still confused.   I see people with much more smarts and experience than me say to cut for length for a certain band BUT I also see that there are numerous online articles saying that if you are laying radials on the ground as opposed to raised in the air, that cutting to specific lengths is far far less critical as long as you have sufficient wire down.  This was supposed to be true for a resonant antenna which the Hustler BTV series are.

My BTV5 was tuned in a couple hours of walking back and forth.  I am waiting on some screened dirt to level off over some of the bare rock at my antenna site before can finish up mine.  Holding up on “my guy” who is supposed to get me some screened dirt and then top soil.

ahh the list of stuff not done at home grows.......then again I surf the net too much.

I had a few things I did wrong.

#1 I didn't use the DX engineering guide.
#2 Mine not completely elevated but not ground mounted either.
#3 My radials were 20ft then moved out for some and shortened on others.
#4 My base settings were based on the Newtronics directions, which are totally different than DXEngineering. It was also based on elevated. Well DXEngineering considers elevated as roof plus 4'. So no wonder it wasn't tuning.

As soon as I get time, I'm gonna bring my mount down to DX heights and get my radials fixed. Then set the base measurements. Then try again.

I've experienced this exact issue.  If your feedpoint is off the ground, and some or most of the radials are off the ground, their length becomes more critical, with good length nodes being at or near odd multiples of wavelengths (1/4, 3/4, 5/4), and bad nodes at the even multiples (1/2, 1, 1 and 1/2).  

For me, I had a vertical that's feed point was about 4 feet off the ground.  I was using 33' radials and could tune most bands decently, but never better than 2.2:1 on 20 meters. 33' is a half-wavelength on 20M, so that was a poor length for the radials to be on that band.  You can add additional radials that are about 1/4-wavelength on the band that's fighting you like you planned and it should help.

In general, if you have the antenna up off the ground and the radials are also suspended or sloping toward the ground, you require fewer of them but their lengths play a bigger role in tuning.  If your antenna is mounted right on the ground, than you'll need more radials to combat the greater ground loss effect, but their lengths are less critical.

Just as an update. It seems to be doing better. What I changed:
1. Followed DX Engineering instructions and threw away the others.
2. Brought the antenna lower. It's only about 20" off the ground. Well the top of the mount. The bottom insulator/of the element is maybe 3" or so.
3. Used the DX Engineering radial plate. Laid radials out again.
4. Set the traps back to OEM specs.
5. Used DX engineering measurements for the segment spacing.

I still need to tune. But it's doing way better. It's resonant in places even now and not tuned. Aside from 10m. I may add more radials for it. I have plenty of room
on the plate and the wire too.