Be my buddy! Icom IC-705 together with the Buddistick antenna. 2 in 1 review!
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- Icom IC-705 transceiver is really good for portable work. Giving out 10 W of power , it requires though as efficient antenna as possible to be used with. IC-705 does not have a built-in automatic antenna tuner. So, it means the resonant antennas are preferable, or use of an external ATU. Both ways are good as there is big variety of tuners , including Icom's own specially designed for the IC-705, and great variety of resonant antennas. The Buddistick antenna by Buddipole company is one of the most popular portable HF 40-6m antennas. It might be very useful when there is no room for any other type of longer wire antennas. It is rapidly deployable and is quite versatile in its installation possibilities. These are pros. But there are some cons also. In this video I wanted to share with you my own experience with this antenna in pair with the IC-705. It's pretty lengthy video but I just wanted to take my time and tell and show things which I thought were important for me and might be useful for others.
I mention in my video the Quick mount set-up for safe and quick mounting and dismounting vertical telescopic whips. Here is my other video in which I was testing such a set with another vertical antenna.
• This antenna brought m...
Thanks for watching, please consider subscribing as I am going to make a Part II on Buddipole : 2 Buddisticks as a dipole! And not only this. Stay tuned! And stay safe!
73! Linas LY2H
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There is no issue with the coil. I've been using both the Buddipole and Buddistick for over 10 years, using QRP, and it has always worked (conditions permitting). The banana clips are banana clips. The more you use them, they wear out. Bend the clips back out until they break and then replace them. Buy a notepad and write down the settings for resonate frequencies. I've used the Buddistick in various masts. If using the long arms and/or long whips, you need to guy the antenna above the coil. Obviously, height of the antenna is a factor. If you're driving around in your van, carry a larger mast. For SOTA, I carry the 11 foot shock corded mast in my rucksack. But I've used the Buddipole on a 33 foot Mastwerk mast. The only issue I have had was with the Buddistick adapter plate bending with longer antennas. Chris fixed that issue with the Buddihub. If you want a simple, easy to use solution, go back to a wire dipole, EFHW, or random wire.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm sure many viewers of this channel will find it useful! 73! Linas LY2H
Binge watching your videos. I work night shift at a prison in Texas so I am staying up all night. The 705 looks like an amazing radio. 73!! de KE5ES
Antenna is like religion. For me I prefer to use inverted V on a 10 meters fiberstick. Okay not easy when you change the band, you have to set up a new dipole. No need for couterpoise, and it is also very cheap. I believe the efficiancy is also much better.
Thanks for commenting! I must confess: much of my religion is about antennas too! I personally like EFHW's and doublets. But there are situations where you just can't use any wire and then various compromise antennas step-in. Some of them are surprisingly good performers , especially shortened dipoles like Buddipole and its clones , incl home made ones. And last but not least, I like experimenting a lot with all and any types of antennas and make videos on it! 73! Linas LY2H
Danke für das tolle Video.73 von Jozef,S56CJG QTH Wien.Österreich.😊😊😊
Very good job. Congrats 73.
Hi thanks for the video. I also have the ic705 and am choosing between the Alex loop or this for activations when in hotels. I see this can operate on more bands but as space is limited in hotels wondering how restrictive this would be compared to the loop. What would be your thoughts? Thanks in advance Si
Hello Si, thanks for watching! Operating from hotels is a very interesting endevour :). I used to travel a lot during last 15 years or so, and saw a great many variety of hotels around Europe, and not only. From the ham radio prospective, the best hotel room is the one on the top floor, with the balcony and with the metal rails in the balcony :). In this type of the hotel the best, in my opinion, antenna would be some portable coil loaded vertical, like Buddistick or great variety of look-a-likes, or just a piece of some 7-9m wire with 9:1 unun ant the tuner. In such a hotel it is sometimes possible to throw an antenna wire out of the window down to some tree or lighting pole etc. But this would be a luxury only found in a rural areas or so, mostly motels. Then, there are rooms with no balcony but with opening windows. There, you can also either fix the Buddistick to the window frame if you have the right hardware, or just throw a wire out of the window loosely, tune it up with the tuner and here you go! There are rooms with windows opening just a little bit, but still enough to put a wire out through the gap. The worst case rooms are in most modern (and expensive) hotels with not opening windows at all! The only way to go in this case is an indoor antenna, and the magnetic loop is the best choice here, being less susceptible to the concrete-metal surroundings of such a building. Surely, the mag loop would perform nicely also in the rooms with the balcony! Hope, this helps and wish you could always choose a hotel yourself! :) 73! Linas LY2H
@@Linas_LY2H Hi Linas, thank you for your reply. The hotels I find myself in are the ones with no window opening, sadly. To be fair they are more like cells. I very much appreciate your advice. Thanks again. Keep safe Si
Lose no hope! Even from the cell, the radio waves will find their way out. Good Luck! Linas LY2H
Hi friend, tell me why this antenna works better at 20 meters than at 40 and 15 meters? What is the problem with this antenna at 40 meters?
Hello Philip! I don't think there is anything wrong with the Buddistick on 40m band! It works as normally, as any shortened antenna should to. It's coil is of good quality which makes losses in it less. Is antenna working "good" or "bad" is much a question of our expectations :). If you expect the short, coil-loded whip to work as a full size quarter-wave-length vertical, then you probably will get dissapointed :). The full size 1/4 w/l antenna on 40m is around 10m tall. The short whip in Buddistick is just ~1.7m long , so more than 5 times shorter than the full-size quarter wave vibrator! In the world of radio waves, the game is simple: the more wire in the air, the more signal on the air! So, when we load the short whip with the coil, it's still a short whip, we don't make it longer and it still radiates only a small amount of energy from your transceiver. With the coil, we just make the transceiver think it is an electrically ( not physically) long whip by adjusting the impedance of the antenna to the impedance of the transmitter. But the coil does not and can not make the 1.7m long wire radiate the same amount of RF energy as would 10m wire do. So, absolutely any shortened and coil loaded vertical antenna will be less efficient than the full size vertical, there is no "miracle coils" and no "miracle whips". If you put the longer Buddistick whip (abt 3m long) on the same coil, find the new resonance tap, you would see an immediate improvement in the reception of weak stations and your signal would be received also much better. If you put the 5m whip on - the performance would be almost comparable to the full-size. On 20m even the short 1.7m whip works better because it is "only" ~ 3 times as shorter as full-size 1/4 wl ( 5m), it means " more wire in the air" on 20m . HTH, 73! Linas LY2H
Common and practical sense !
TNX es 73 ON4SG
Great movie as always. I have this antenna and I must admit that it is the weakest antenna I have ever had. It is unstable and behaves differently in different places. I do not like her. Thank you for another great video
The stock whips are so fragile. If they get dropped a few feet, they break. The heavy duty ones are expensive. I have the system, but ended up getting an MFJ-1979 17 foot whip. It is very strong.
Have you tried multiple counterpoise, 0.05 of wavelength? say four to eight lengths of wire. The length or height is not critical. G7VFY
Thanks for the idea! I have not tried this yet. It would be a Ground Plane type of the antenna then, just with shortened vibrator and poor ground due to too short radials. It would certainly work but the efficiency on lower bands would be even worse. But it would be really interesting to compare in practice! Let me know if you find out something interesting! 73! Linas LY2H
@@Linas_LY2H No. Short ground radial wires are all you need. Short cables and plenty of them. A dozen 5m? radials will be more effective than one long counterpoise. Also, lowering all the DC resistances would improve performance too. Replacing Aluminium with copper or brass.
Excellent review without bias. I bought a Buddipole kit recently. While it does seem very versatile, it seems over engineered and slightly complicated.
The Wolf River Coils Mega Mini TIA ground mounted vertical seems much easier, more stable, and less expensive with a longer radiating element (213”) . Sometimes less is more. I do not own the Wolf River antenna, but have used A ground mounted telescopic vertical a lot which is still highly effective. Thank you for your excellent review! I will be watching more of your videos.
Thank you for an excellent video! I will subscribe, really enjoyed it! 73, de vo1ja.
Very interesting video thx
Great video. Nice job…thanks.
25:08 in case you want to know if it is resonant enough.
SO why don't you just add more radials at different lengths for the band frequencies you need?
You won't have to keep running out winding and unwinding the radial.
4-5 wires held up by fibreglass rods poked in the ground.
Trim 1 wire for the middle of each band
-retract the whip 10 inches from being fully extended
-adjust the tap point of the coil to where the middle of that band is.
When you wish to work CW lower in frequency lengthen the whip up.
When you want to work ssb shorten the whip for higher frequency.
If you want to work 80 metres order the low frequency coil with the 60 foot radial wire.
I have found that playing with radial length from what is written on his paper just increases the overall SWR
By adding several radials to the lengths of the other bands as stated on the paper you don't have to run wind and unwind
each time you change bands.
I would rather just stay near the antenna and change to the tap points I have already preset on the coil and slide the whip up and down to adjust the SWR.
I like how it works on mine.
SO why? Because: 1. I've been testing and reviewing the antenna as it comes from the factory 2. If I'd followed your recommended procedure I'd probably had to run around with no less than 5 radials plus adjusting whip length instead if one radial :) 3. Buddistic with 5 elevated radials would be something different of an antenna than it was initialy designed for - quick deployment and easy to handle :) . But thanks for your input and comment anyway, I will surely try this out ! 73! Linas LY2H
a lovely and well worth watching video
I watched all the video because of the vertical antenna. I’m curious how you record both front and back camera views at same time? Do you have a special app or phone?
Thanks Daniel! The double camera view comes from the special app Double Take . I use it with my iPhone 11 Pro Max. 73! Linas LY2H
Nice video again Linas. Take care
Chris suggests to put the banana plug into a vise to spread it open. He advises against a small screwdriver, although many people use them.
Thanks for an idea! But please check my other video on this channell where I decided to make a mod on the coil and turned the clips into a sliding contacts. I'm pretty happy with this , so far. Surely, "the vise advice" is still valid for this mod too! 73! Linas LY2H
Great video.
How can you tell when a vertical is a ground plane vertical? Why can't you just add more radials on the BuddiStick? Would that help the efficiency?
It's a very good question! Usually, when the antenna is vertical, the length is 1/4 wavelength , it's installed on the ground level and there are radials laying on the ground - it's a ground plain antenna. It could be installed on the roof of the house with the same radials laying on the roof. The number of 1/4 wl radials in this case is starting from 3 and up ( could be up to 120 but I personally think and there are studies to prove this, that anything more than 30 makes no feasible improvement worth of investment. In my practice, 16 radials is a good compromise between the costs and efficiency. And the on-ground laying radials don't need to be 1/4 wl, could be shortened. I had a 18m high vertical ( with wire for 80m band) with 16 radials of 12,5m long each with great performance).
If you have only one radial and it's elevated at least 1 ft from the ground, such antenna is not considered a ground plane, just a vertical with elevated radial, sometimes - "the L-type antenna" due to its letter L resemblance. So, the Buddistick is a physically shortened compromise antenna with the loading coil in order to "make it electrically longer" ( technically, to compensate the capacitive reactance with the inductance of the coil) up to the 1/4 wl on the bands from 40 and up ( by tapping the coil). It's designed in the factory as a L antenna, with one elevated radial which is resonant and needs to be tuned on different bands in order to have a nice SWR and better efficiency. But there is no reasons whatsoever what could stop you from installing some 3, 10 or 30 1/4 wl on 40m band long radials ( or shorter) on the ground and make it a classical ( just coil loided) 1/4 wl Ground Plane antenna! Please let us know how did you like the performance then, if you did this! Hope, this helps! 73! Linas LY2H
@@Linas_LY2H Thank you for the expiration. What do you mean by"classical (just coil loaded) 1/4 wavelength. I understand about the radials and I will look at the ARRL's Antenna Book on the shortest radial size. Thanks again.
@@cylurian I mean that if you put a bunch of radials benearh the Buddistick, it gonna perform like a vertical Quarter Wave long antenna, just with a bit reduced effectiveness due to the loading coil and shorter size. On radials, there is a great article in QST March 2010. 73! Linas LY2H
Thank you.
I will that buddy stick work with any radio
Surely it will! Good Luck! 73! Linas LY2H
What a great video! Thank you! I just got a new Buddistick "Pro" and am looking forward to getting it out today and trying it. It looks like a cleverly engineered device. 73 from KD7LX.
Thanks for watching! Yes, it's a nicely engineered antenna. Except of one thing which I don't like, it's the tap points on the coils. I have made a mod on mine Buddipole to make these clips sliding. If you interested it's here on my page:
ua-cam.com/video/8gFhqQbrXnM/v-deo.html
Enjoy your new Pro! Let me know how did you like its tripod- I don't have one but it looks attractive! 73! Linas LY2H
The tripod is very light and easy to deploy. A little top heavy but easy to anchor using the supplied eye bolt to hang a weight from. I’m still learning to tune the antenna. The table doesn’t give a tap setting for 30 meters!
Thank you Linas. Hope to meet you on the band. 73
Sure!
Great Video and so much information from a non native English speaker. You hit all aspects of your idea very well. Hat tip to you mate! Keep on making more videos. Kindest regards from Australia.