Experimenting with the Buddistick

I have to admit I have had a Buddistick™ for a while but never really used it. Last weekend was a long weekend in Canada (Monday was Victoria Day) and the family, including my mother visiting from the UK, occupied a cottage on the Rideau River in the village of Burritts Rapids.  Now was a good chance to do some portable work and I decided to use the Buddistick™ as the antenna.

Buddistick setup on a tripod with single counterpoise

Well, as all the family was there and the kids and myself wanted to do some fishing I did not spend too much time with the radio, but when I did I was more involved in investigating the best settings for the antenna (coil tap points and counterpoise lengths).  Here is a brief summary of my findings, which used the standard Buddistick™ on a camera tripod and a single elevated counterpoise.

Band	Tap point	Counterpoise Length
17m	8	13 feet
20m	12	13 feet
40m	Full coil	31 feet

Notes:

• The tap point count is from the top of the coil (at the telescopic section end)
• These settings were to achieve <2:1 SWR across most of the band.
• On 40m the SWR rose above 2:1 towards the low frequency (CW) part of the band
• To help with quick adjustment the supplied counterpoise was marked at 23ft, 15ft and 10ft lengths.

If you have any different findings or tips on using the Buddistick™ I would be glad to receive them and share them here.

As I said, I did not have much time to operate, but I did make one contact on Monday morning, Wit, W1IT in South Carolina, heard me reply to his CQ on 40m.  He could pull out my 10W signal from the K2 and Buddistick™ on SSB and we had a nice chat.

As for the fishing, both children (aged 5 and 7), as well as Dad, caught rock bass.  The kids were interested to see the bright red eye, as well as the relatively large mouths of these little fish.  A great weekend was had by all the family.