Hi Jundy:
From my experience, you roughly have three choices for a SOTA antenna:
-
Spacy summit, no total hurry (total time on summit> 20-30 min): trapped EFHW, inverted L or inverted V. I use that 80% of the time.
-
Small summit, some time on the summit for tuning the antenna due to effects of soil and radials position: Resonant/matched vertical.
I used this in the past:
But the exact match is unpredictable; and it can take 15-20 minutes to adjust the radials until you reach an acceptable SWR.
- Small summit and need for quick activation (<15 minutes in the summit): Vertical or Up-and-outer with a tuner, be it inside the antenna, an Elecraft T1, or inside the rig.
Note that the varible LC match in my planned next version of the Matterhorn design will only compensate for the small bit of mismatch due to soil and radial deployment. The main loading coil is from 1-1.5 mm silver-plates copper, hence high Q.
It is maybe 1 S-levels, max two worse than my trapped EFHW, but has never failed me so far.
When my design is done, I will try a few WSPR comparisons.
73 de Martin, DK3IT