An end-fed half wave inverted L (EFHWL) done properly works very well. It needs to be tuned at the base of the wire against ground.
An EFHWL for 80m is an excellent antenna that has no nulls and has vertically polarized low angle radiation equal to a decent 1/4 wave vertical. The horizontal wire fills in the general pattern to a hemisphere with a broad and mild null in the direction of the horizontal pull. It is an ideal all-distance contest antenna, because there are no holes in coverage in any direction or elevation. I have used this antenna at 1.5 kW off and on across 50 years with excellent results. The current max is at the bend, with a high resistance feed at the ground, making the effective series resistance of the grounding system of no consequence. Even a completely pathetic 100 ohm ground at the base does little damage against a 1000-2000-3000 ohm feedpoint for the wire. It IS uncommon and requires tuning at the base of the antenna, and that network requires components usually found in the output tuning networks of tube based QRO amplifiers. You can't feed the base of the antenna directly from coax without a tuner, and you can't buy the tuner off the shelf anywhere. With some DPST relays, coil stock and a single well-chosen fixed value QRO transmit capacitor, the antenna + tuning mechanism can cover the entire 3.5-4 ham band with less than 1.5:1 SWR anywhere. With some further work in the tuning mechanism, and attention to a proper 160m counterpoise, the wire will work well on 160-80-40-30 with distance from any tower(s). In my experience with that over the years, the EFHWL always beat an 80 dipole or inverted vee for DX and was as good as or beat dipole and vee for local and mid range. A 4-square would beat the EFHWL for DX. 73, Guy. On Sat, Jul 5, 2014 at 1:10 PM, WILLIS COOKE via Elecraft < elecraft@mailman.qth.net> wrote: > Off center fed dipoles, Windoms and end fed half waves are primarily low > power if not QRP antennas where you can do poorly with any antenna. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
