Better than expected performance.

As promised, I’ve now had time to use this antenna more extensively. In my initial review the antenna was mounted on a chain link fence and also used the provided ground peg.

My suggestion is that it would help performance if this antenna was used with ground radials, 4 as a minimum with 8 most likely being a better option with a length of 20′-30. This should improve its long-haul performance significantly if you don’t have something like a metal fence to mount the antenna on.

The performance of the antenna when a suitable grounding system is in place is impressive for such a compact design. On Christmas day I spent several hours using it and managed contacts with pileups in Jamaica, Canary Is, an island off Newfoundland, numerous contacts in South America and AK, 80 contacts in all in very iffy band conditions on bands from 10-40. This from my QTH in SW Indiana.

The highest SWR I saw, using a tuner was around 1.5. It will tune in the higher portions of 80, but my tuner was unable to get a good match in the lower portions. I still haven’t caught 6 open to test there.

For someone needing a low-profile antenna say in a HOA or apartment, vacation location or for portable/field ops, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. I still haven’t been able to test it for NVIS use, but I suspect that may be possible.

My next step will be to purchase the 80m NVIS add on and see how that works.

KT9B

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