As a new ham, I did a lot of research to find a HF antenna that was:

1. Multi-band
2. Stealth
3. Easy to assemble and deploy
4. Works well out of the box
5. Simple to understand and use

Even though there weren’t tons of reviews on the Alpha Vertical, it seemed to fit most of my criteria. I took a deep breath and ordered. Anxious to try out my new General license on the HF bands, I asked the Alpha guys if I could pay for expedited shipping. They responded quickly that they would be happy to send the antenna 2-day express for no extra charge. Wow!

I got the antenna just in time for my first weekend on HF. It was packed nicely, assembled it in a few minutes. I had a few newbie questions and the online support people answered quickly and late at night–very impressive! I set it up in my side yard out of the view of my across the street HOA president, ran some coax into my shack and tuned up 20 meters. The antenna matched 20 meters almost perfectly and I called CQ. Got a response back on my first try–a ham almost 600 miles away reported my signal a 5-9. 40 meters was just coming to life so I checked SWR down on that band and the Alpha matched better than 1:2. Called CQ on 40 and made contacts from California to Oregon, Washington, Utah and New Mexico. The 40 meter folks sounded like they were down the street! A little gun shy of the antenna restrictions and the HOA guy across the street prevented me from extending the antenna to its full height of 23. I was probably around 15′.

I’ll be on the air this coming weekend, learning more about my radios and more about the Alpha. If you are looking for a good portable HF antenna or a stealthy one for your antenna-restricted base, you might want to give this one a look. I’m nowhere near an expert, but it was pretty exciting making contacts my first night ever as a ham with this affordable, simple, well-engineered antenna. Just think what I could do with this thing if I really knew what the heck I was doing!
KJ6VWX