I found someone selling a Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna on craigslist for under $100 so I had to go check it out. I went and it looked in good shape, and the guy sold it with a 20′ mast attached which made the deal even better! (Not that I planned on installing it on the mast)
We are lucky to have 10 acres so there is plenty of space to install the antenna along with a sufficient radial system. Well, once I purchased a bunch of accessories to install the antenna, it ended up being much more than $100…
I added a tilt plate to make it easier to tune and to lay down in bad weather, a radial plate, 2000′ of wire for radials, and a feedline choke. I installed the radial plate and laid out 48 radials, majority of which are 33′ long and 4 that are 66′. Once I got it all installed, I measured the traps and set them at factory specs and replaced a few of the clamps. I also applied Jet-Lube where needed. After I got it finished, I fine-tuned the trap spacing and achieved decent SWR across all of the bands.
The G5RV does well on 20, 40, 80, but not so much on 17m so I decided to get the 17m add-on and installed that as well. It’s already made a bunch of dx contacts on ft8, and SSB as well.
I am looking forward to having a low takeoff angle for some DX with the vertical, as well as better 10, 15, and 17 meter coverage.