Thomas Schiller, N6BT once wrote an article titled "Everything Works". In the article he discussed how he worked all continents on CW (a mode that you can actually hear) using a light bulb antenna during the ARRL DX contest.
The AX1 appears to be a 45" whip with a base inductor made of 20AWG wire. I am not sure what is inside the base, if anything, to bring the impedance up to 50 ohms. With some sunspots, I am sure that it is fun for pedestrian mobile use which is what it's designed for. A 1/2wl dipole or 1/4wl vertical will be a much better radiator. John KK9A David Gilbert ab7e wrote: A comparison to any other antenna would be useful. A comparison to a 50 ohm resistor with a similar counterpoise wire would be even more useful as a baseline measurement. If anyone wants to lend me their AX1 I will do that. 73, Dave AB7E On 9/19/2022 10:33 AM, Ron Gruner wrote: > I've been impressed by how well my little AX-1 whip antenna performs on 20 > meters. Here's a photo of the rig: https://gruner.com/k4rhg/andover_ma.png > and the propagation map: https://gruner.com/k4rhg/wspr_2watts_sep16_2022.png > > A friend, Derek Rowell (AK1WI), gave me a two-watt WSPR kit he had designed > -- easy and fun to build. I connected the unit to the AX-1 sitting in a > window sill facing west and strung the out-of-the-box counterpoise over a > lamp shade and bed headboard. No idea what the SWR is, but it must be > pretty good. > > I immediately began receiving propagation reports and within 24 hours had > reports from 240 unique stations. The farthest was VK5ARG (17,276 km) with > a SNR of -21. Even though the window faced the west, propagation into > Europe was strong with SV9KI (7,800 km) reporting -26 SNR. The > propagation report is from http://wspr.rocks/ <http://wspr.rocks/> > > I've found that WSPR is a great way to evaluate antennas. The AX-1 seems > to be performing very well. > > 73, > Ron Gruner > K4RHG ______________________________________________________________ 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
