I took Carl up on his introductory offer for the Hybrid-mini that came with counterpoise kit, mil whip and 60' wire.  Nice outfit as usual from Carl.  I was one of those asking for a portable Hybrid, and this really fits the bill.  The Hybid-mini with just the mil whip was going to be a pretty short antenna for HF.  So I thought I'd add the short arms and the coil from a Buddistick kit.  I am going to give it the true DX test tomorrow in the country on the IARU HF World Championship, but wanted to a few things set up and tested before I heaed out to the wind and rattlesnakes in the Pawnee National Grasslands.  I've attached the pic but to I built it from the bottom up this way.  Tripod with legs tthat I can extend flat.  Jaw mount on tripod arm.  (Make sure you take the plastic washer between the antenna mount and the jaw mount.)   4 counter poise wires, put on the bottom bolt of the Hybrid-mini and screw into the antenna mount on the jaw mount.  50' coax with several coils close to the Hybid-mini.  Buddistick 11' arm.  Buddistick coil with 5 taps evenly spread out along the the length of the coil.  Another Buddistick 11" arm.  Chameleon mil spec whip. 

The results were that I could get the best SWR's for the various bands as follows with the various taps.  160 mtr- 5.0 untapped (I don't think I'd try 160 on this short of an antenna),   80 mtr- 2.4 untapped, 2.5 black tap, 60 mtr- 3.0 green tap, 40 mtr - 2.4 green tap, 30 mtr - 1.8 yellow tap, 20 mtr 2.0 yellow tap, 17 mtr - 1.8 red tap, 15 mtr - 1.5 red tap, 12 mtr - 1.5 red tap, 10 meter - 1.5 red tap.  My analyzer does not do 6 meters, nor does my tuner tune it, but at the radio SWR was 1.5. If I were to work 6 meters, I'd try it without any coil and see what would happen.

The LDG tuner tuned all of these to 1.1 except for 17 mtrs and 12 mtrs, which were 1.5.  

Finally, I did some Reverse Beacon Network calls to see if it was getting out on a couple of the bands.  I got one CA and two UT on 40 mtrs (9 in the morning here, 40 pretty dead by then), on 20 meters I got OH, PA, NV and QC - Quebec City, Canada (20 should have been getting good at that time of the morning), a bit early for 15 meters but got hits in NV and CA, and on 10 mtrs got a CA hit. 

You might ask why did I want to combine the Hybrid-min and Buddistick when the Hybrid-mini and my tuner probably could match without it.  Well, I am not sure it could for one, the SWR are more severe without it.  Why not just the Buddistick, well I've used it and it can be really tought to tune and is very sensitive to counterpoise length.  But, the Buddistick is very efficiend when tuned.  So now I've got the best of both worlds in my mind, a more efficent antenna through use of a coil and easily tuned through use of the Hybrid-mini.  If it does as well as I think it will on QSOs, it will be a very portable, quick to deploy outfit.

So I am excited to get it out and give it a real world test - and hope to do that tomorrow.

Here are the pics:

73 to all John