PA8MM’s antenna is really nicely made.
Commercial antennas are usually quite complex to set up. They have various coils and radials. The price/performance ratio and even the pack size and weight aren’t always convincing. … and whether it can always be used without a tuner - I have my doubts.
Now I’m the happy owner of a KX2 with a tuner and have a 5.8 m random wire with a 1:9 Unun as an alternative.
The wire is attached to the top of the Decathlon mast and pushed up. After the Unun comes some coax with a current balun. The coax shield serves as a counterweight up to the balun. The Decathlon mast is placed in a fishing rod holder. The cost for everything was about 35 euros.
At the SOTA-BW meeting, Roman @DL3TU and I compared our antennas. Roman had a telescopic antenna with radials and various coils. We couldn’t detect any difference when quickly swapping the antenna connectors. A QSO with Ignacio @EA2BD didn’t reveal any differences either.
If you have a tuner that can handle a random wire/1:9 Unun, then you can be happy with a single piece of wire. By the way… in the time it takes to set up such an antenna with a coil and radials, I’ve already made my first four QSOs.
The advantage of these antennas is clearly their flat radiation pattern. On May 22nd, when D4DX/P was QRV on 10m on D4/IB-023 , I tried calling him from EI/IW-035 with the endfed for a long time without success. I then switched to the 5.80m wire vertically on the mast and had him on the first call: S2S with D4 - nice!
73 Armin