Working 10m with my R5 vertical #hamradio #r5 #vertical #antenna #dx [more info in description]

hamradio #r5 #vertical #antenna #dx #HamClock #HFClock The 10m band is open to South America, and my vertical is beating my wire for a change. FYI... The Cushcraft R5 is an end-fed electrical half-wave vertical (not a ¼-wave monopole) on 10–20 m. Its feedpoint is high-impedance and is matched by the black-box network plus the four short (~48 in) base rods, which act as a capacitive counterpoise/decoupling hat. They are not used as traditional radials. Adding extra radials or a ground-plane system: Detunes the matching network and shifts resonance/SWR. Can couple extra RF onto the coax shield. Gives essentially no efficiency gain (measurements on the similar R7000 showed ~0.1 dB). Important! Cushcraft designed and specified the antenna to run without a radial field; the R-series manuals explicitly advise against attaching one. Keep the supplied short rods and mount it in the clear. Caution! The best height is 8-12 feet or 20 feet. On 20m a 16-foot metal mast is the problem. Sixteen feet is essentially a quarter-wavelength at 14MHz. That length of conductive pipe sitting directly under the R5 base couples hard to the high-impedance feed and the four short counterpoise rods. The mast then acts like an extra resonant element the matching network was never designed for. Result is usually a shifted or flattened 20 m dip, higher SWR, and extra RF on the shield. Shorter masts (8–12 ft) stay electrically short on 20m, so they don’t steal the resonance. That’s the RF reason to avoid 16 feet. I went with 20 feet to better clear my house, but 20 feet does increase the wind load a bit. However, my 20 feet of mast starts at the dirt and is secured in two places with brackets that screw into 6 x 6-inch deck supports. You can see videos of my R5 in my Cushcraft R5 playlist on YouTube and in my Antennas collection at: www.PATREON.com/N4HNH Note that most of the operating techniques I show and teach on my channel can be applied to other transceivers, even other brands of transceivers. Some knobs or buttons might be labeled differently but the function is the same. I have no allegiance to Yaesu. No manufacturer makes a perfect radio. They all have strengths and they all have weaknesses. I like to point those out. Yaesu thinks that I am targeting them, but I am not. In fact, they generally have the fewest weaknesses. It’s just that I want my viewers to know the good, the bad, and the ugly, so they can make informed purchase decisions. I am able to be objective because I have no allegiance to a particular manufacturer. My work is supported by private donations, via www.PATREON.com/N4HNH. I hope you enjoy this video and find it helpful. If you find my channel informative and entertaining, I hope you will consider joining my support group by clicking on: www.patreon.com/N4HNH There are 3 levels of support, including exclusive content. Visibility of premium content is determined by the level of membership you choose. The higher the membership level, the more content you have access to. VIP members are invited to participate in periodic Zoom meetings. Most videos are visible to the Patreon team members long before they are released for public viewing. Some videos are never released for public viewing. Yearly S7 (Executive) and S9 (VIP) members have access to the menu optimizations PDFs I’ve written for the FT-891, FT-991A, FTdx5000MP, FTdx101D/MP, FTdx10, and FT-710 AESS. S7 (Executive) members who subscribe annually can receive one menu optimizations PDF while annual S9 (VIP) members can receive multiple menu optimizations documents, my FT8 configuration guide for either the FTdx10 or the FT-710 AESS, plus future updates. If I discover something new, or a future firmware update affects a function, I will update the guide(s) accordingly. Guides for future radios might also be added. The documents are copyrighted. They shall not be divulged to anyone else without written permission from Doug McAlexander, callsign N4HNH. Another great way to help support this channel is to click like and subscribe. 73, de N4HNH