YO3BN - Portable End Fed Antenna

Last edited - 14th May 2017

Portable End Fed Antenna - Part 2

After I packed my stuff, I was pleasantly surprised to observe that my backpack weighs less than expected. That was due my new antenna setup, without a feeder line, with a much thinner wire, smaller tuning system, fewer accessories, etc. With my entire portable QRP station and clothes the backpack weighed about 8.5 kg not 13 kg as usual.

Arrived Saturday at noon on Lehliu/Romania - KN34KL - 60km East of Bucharest. Within few tens of minutes my long wire antenna was installed. Unfortunately, on my property isn't enough space to fully install 40m of straight wire without touching a tree or something. The wire was raised from its middle with a 6m fiberglass fishpole similar to an inverted V, but with the two sides touching some trees, and evenmore, the free end was bent like an L shape because of insufficient space. So, the antenna was installed worse than last time, it took a shape of /L this time.

The counterpoise was a wire of 10-12m long thrown on the ground. The SWR was set to minimum adjusting counterpoise and variable capacitor of the impedance adapter. Then the SWR-bridge was removed from antenna's circuit and a much finer tune was done using the electromagnetig field strength meter.

Conclusions

Despite its malformed shape and my QRP power of 4W PEP, this antenna worked well. Four contacts from Bucharest 60km away reported 59+ for my singnal strength, 59+5 from 98km Baicoi, 59 from 200km Leskovets Bulgaria, 55 from Tutova 190km away. Unfortunately, I was unable to hear my CW signals on a WebSDR located in UK, but very weak signals reached the WebSDR located in North Greece. When I tested this antenna previous weekend in Bucharest - Agronomie I was able to hear my CW signals very clear on the same WebSDR Greece during the daytime, around 13-15 o'clock, therefore I blame that malformed shape of antenna and trees nearby.

Even if the testing time was very short, regarding advantages of this antenna (simplicity, less weight) it seems to be a very practical antenna for portable operations, therefore this will be my next project.

73 de YO3BN