I have the 17’ Chameleon SS whip and am interested in using it for 6m SSB. The mfg. says that it can be used without a coil out to 20m. Has anyone had any experience with that antenna with no coil? Particularly how you tuned it and grounding.
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Assuming this is the same 17’ telescoping whip as on the Chameleon MPAS Lite, the answer is yes.
Normally, I mount the whip and matching transformer on the supplied ground spike when hillwalking for SOTA. But on this occasion, I parked my estate car [station wagon] by the side of the road at a hilly location, I mounted the whip and transformer on a large HF magmount on the car roof. In this case the car provided the ground plane.
I was running 5W CW on 6m from my 20-year-old FT817 via a LDG Z11 Pro II ATU. I was getting and giving good reports from all over EU. No coil.
I’ve used the MPAS Lite much more often on 30m to 10m [no coil] [10W CW from KX2/internal ATU] with good reports. I use about 8m (~25ft) of counterpoise wire. I’ve found performance on 40m [again, no coil] is poor to adequate.
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It is easy to use without the coil, it’s a simple vertical antenna. Use at least one counterpoise which can be attached the mount for the whip. Extend the whip to 1/4 wave - 54 inches for 6M - and tune by adjusting whip length. MFJ sells a mount, as do other manufacturers, for ~$20 or less for this purpose, MFJ-342T. Drive a 3/8" spike (12’ length preferred) into the ground, attach the mount and whip & counterpoise and you are all set to go.