So, attempted to add 12m and 17m with wires. Also, a second 80m resonator to get a slice of 75m and 80m.

10m, 12m, 17m are great.

15,20,30,40 are long.

I see no secondary dip in 3Mhz with the added resonator.

I have no more play to shorten anything between the traps to get the high bands back where they need to be………

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The top support for the wires is PCV, not metal.

Colt653 has done this modification, so maybe he will chime in after work post his experiences.

I am thinking i need to start trimming back the 12m element first, watching what that does to everything else. Then fool with the 17m element.

If things stay wonky, the traps can be tweaked by shifting their housings. A quick description can be found here. https://hamuniverse.com/hustlerbtvtrapcalibration.html

Kind of a last resort thing, but useful. I have wires coming off the feed point on mine for 12, 17, & 80. Another off the top is for a 160m  inverted L following a wound coax trap for 40.  The wire for 80 is pulled from a tree hung pulley.

The end goal for the second resonator is a 19’ wire to have the 160m FT8 frequ. Have to figure out this other stuff first………

what is the horizonal T bar in this pic made of ?

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I've only added the 17meter element, I used PVC to stand-off

the top is a long PVC insulator.

At the bottom, the wire is connected to the antenna

The top is pvc. The bottom is aluminum.

good

i’d remove all the mods, and start over, one step at a time

add one mod and test

repeat

check SWR on every band every time

I've seen quite a few other people with 6BTV antennas that had problems getting 40m SWR low enough.  I had the same problem running out of room with the tubing above the 30m trap being just a little too long to get the middle of the dip centered on the 40m general class phone band.  

Anyhow these antennas are designed to be used with no radial field at all.  Adding a good ground de-tunes them.  I have 32, 33 foot radials.  I used the DX Engineering instructions for the measurements and after fine tuning I got the following plot:

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Then I added a small shunt coil because
40m SWR was higher than I wanted to see.  DX Engineering sells a fancy adjustable coil, but it's pricey and doesn't do anything differently than this does.

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Now look at 40m.  If you squint you can see the dip is still on the lower end of the band, but the SWR at resonance is much lower than it was.  Still, it needs to come up in frequency a bit. I fiddled with the 30m trap and it threw everything off so I put it back to where it was and have decided I might just cut an inch off the tube above the 30m trap and deepen the slots with a hacksaw and call it good.  

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80m is still a problem I'll have to figure out, but I have a wire antenna up that is more broad-banded on 80 anyway.  I do want to tune the 80m section for FT8 but it will have to wait until I have more free time to figure out what the antenna needs for that to happen.  Maybe more turns on the shunt coil will do it

The only band that was a little off before was the 30m band. Has always been a little long there. However, it is 1.9 on the JS8 Frequ, so very usable.

I am going to follow the above suggestion and take everything off and add it one thing at a time. Maybe I will get a friend to come over to help a little. I was a tad rushed today thinking I had enough time to get it done and ready for the weekend DX.

I will just start with the bottom aluminum bar and see if that detuned the whole thing. I might have to feed them directly to the bottom and build another PVC stand off for the bottom.

I took PVC pipe and used a hole saw to make a notch the size of the antenna tube so that it fits very nice for the top piece, I can just  make a duplicate for the bottom if needed. I was just trying to kinda copy what the hustler one looks like to a certain degree. Plus I have been on a little bit of a metal working rampage lately. lol.

Taking 6” off the 17m wire brought everything back into happiness. All bands are under 2.0SWR……… except 30m and 40m. Have to work on that later when i have more time.