End Fed HF Antennas

[Chip Fetrow]

I forgot to mention this in my previous e-mail:  Power makes absolutely no difference.  The only time you MIGHT see some interesting effects from long wire antennas at high power is when they are multiples of 1/2 wave in length.  The light show can be impressive.

Field Day is kind of a special case.  I would recommend dipoles as no ground system is required.  Either that, or put in a proper ground system with the plan of reusing it every year.  There are some commercial verticals which claim to need minimal ground systems.  Even though they are HF antennas, they claim that they may be tower mounted, quite some distance above the earth.  I’m sure they work OK, but I doubt great.

—chip

On Oct 1, 2014, at 1:00 PM, tacos-request at amrad.org wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 09:31:07 -0400
> From: kf4hcw <kf4hcw at lifeatwarp9.com>
> To: tacos at amrad.org
> Subject: Re: End Fed HF Antennas
> 
> On 2014-09-30 18:35, R Cramer wrote:
>> Does anyone have any practical experience with end fed HF antennas
>> capable of handling 200W PEP or there abouts.  Higher power labels is
>> also OK.
> 
> I recently did a bit of reading on the subject before deciding to erect
> a vertical loop instead. The biggest reasons being:
> 
> End fed antennas tend to take up a lot of space.
> End fed antennas, especially of any power, require significant
> counter-poise mechanisms.
> 
> I have used end fed antennas with lower power in the past with mixed
> results -- usually ad-hoc wire antennas at field-day ops.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> _M