Out in the back yard, far from the house and all the neighboring houses, is my Butternut HF9V vertical HF antenna. It’s ground-mounted and fed with underground 50 ohm coaxial hard line. There’s a three foot high wooden fence surrounding the base to keep dogs and critters at bay. Three UV-resistant Dacron rope guys run …

We need more HF ops! Tune across the HF bands anytime but a contest weekend and you’ll hear plenty of nothing – unless you happen upon the FT8 frequencies – they always seem to have activity. Even so, there’s plenty of empty real estate, and even the CW portions of the bands seems wanting these …