DK3IT
22 January 2018 20:36
40
N1EU:
A “dream solution” that could (also) meet your special requirements would be a KX2 in hand-held orientation with a telescoping whip antenna (e.g. MFJ 18xxT) and a short counterpoise wire.
I think the MFJ is a poor performing antenna because of the very short radiator, despite the fact that Elecraft seems to give it some kind of endorsement. I agree on deploying a telescopic whip and counterpoise if you need short setup time, but the whip needs to be longer than the MFJ. I did some tests on the 20M version of the MFJ antenna and they were not very encouraging.
Someone (Sotabeams?) should offer a 10-12ft/3-4M whip with tapped loading coil and perhaps a 1-3M insulating base pole. Maybe some company is already offering such an antenna???
73, Barry N1EU
Hi Barry,
for this purpose, I designed the following loaded vertical:
Hi,
I had promised to provide more details on my most recent antenna project for SOTA, which is a three-band vertical with a loading coil at the base.
Background: I am a happy user of the 3-band EFHW with traps designed by Heinz, HB9BCB, but on some summits, the ca. 16 m of wire are difficult to deploy. On crowded summits (like skitouring in winter), you risk to annoy people by an inverted vee of that size right on the summit (and they might even take down parts of your antenna without asking)…
It served me very well on several small summits, is very fast to set up, and not a whole lot heavier than a telescopic whip. Plus, the radiator is about 5 m long and thus much more efficient than the 51 - 128 cm of the MFJ / ATX and similar small antennas.
73 de Martin, DK3IT