M0CVO HFC-3015V Vertical Short Antenna for 40m - 10m

Recently I had a new mast fitted for my 2m and 70cm antenna's and in the process lost the centre support for my HF doublet and needed something to replace it that wasn't too intrusive.  

I was toying with another centre feed antenna of some kind however I have a particularly small garden with no trees or other readily available supports for antenna's and no easy to access to the ground due to the garden being covered in decking I decided a vertical that didn't need a ground spike was probably the way to go.   Being disabled I also wanted something I didn't have to make myself, sadly I'm past that point in life.

I found the HFC-3015V via Google it's a 1.7m tall, designed for flat dwellers and people with small gardens and according to the website will tune with the internal ATU fitted in most modern rigs on the 30 15, 12 and 10m bands as well as 40, 20 and 17m with an external ATU and some counterpoises and handles up to 300W, I never use more than a 100W on HF so more than adequate.

HFC_3015V

The antenna is made from 40mm PVC-U, polypropylene, waste pipe by the looks of it and has a wall thickness of 2.5mm.  

A fairly thick piece of wire spirals up the pipe from the balun, could be an unun,  to about half way along and then wound into a coil of approximately 30 turns and then again spiralled to the last loading coil which is about 90 turns.

Now you're meant to fix this to a mast using standard mast clamps as depicted below.

Style of clamp supplied with the Antenna.

However I'll use two slightly different clamps which I feel will hold the antenna far more securely, depicted below.

New style clamp.

I'm also going to slide a piece of wood dowel inside the pipe so that the clamps can be tightened without fear of deforming the PVC.

I plan to fix the antenna to the chimney stack using a standard lashing kit, which is already present, on a section of 48mm scaffold pole which is again already fitted.

The website says the antenna is IP56 rated and may only need some self amalgamating tape on the SO-239 feed point.   You can see in the picture below the balun, though it looks to be well made I still think I'll put some more sealant around the box seal as well as rubber coat the antenna and counterpoise connections as living by the sea tends to destroy all type of metal fixing very quickly.  I would have liked having a look inside however the screws felt extremely tight remove.

HFC_3015V Balun

I'll use an LDG RT-100 remote ATU with the unit and fix that to the same supporting mast as the antenna.    I'll also fix three or four 1.5m counterpoises to aid with matching on 40, 20 and 17m.

I'm still not convinced that the antenna will work that well, the M0CVO website doesn't hold any more details other than what bands it'll work on,  but we'll have to wait and see but for 70 GBP I thought it was worth a punt.  

I did think about modelling the antenna in mmana-gal but shock a little at the prospect of adding all the wires for the spirals and loading coils.

Anyway as is always the way with these things as soon as the antenna arrived the MetOffice forecast rain for two weeks, typical!  Once erected and on air I'll let you know how I get on and whether or not I thought it was worth the asking price.