Today John and I ascended Glorieta Mesa.? Of interest to others, at this time there is essentially no snow there at 8,000 ft elev.? Condx were fine, EU was worked by one of us on each of the higher bands.

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I have been using an endfed HALFwave wire since 2012.? My reasons include that it does not require a radial on the ground as does a random wire which is lossy, and that I can use the last several feet of the wire as a feedline, no coax.? Coax adds weight, loss, and several connectors which in frequent use can fail.

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Matching a halfwave at the end is challenging.? There must be a very high transformation.? In 2012 I found the web pages of AA5TB where he explained how he was dealing with an endfed halfwave.? I copied his circuit exactly, but used smaller components since I am running QRP.? After a few tries, I was able to make this so small that it fits in a dental floss case.? I even made one with a built-in SWR indicator, the “tinySWR” by Martin Hepp, DK3IT.

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Today, I believe, for the first time, … AA5TB chased me on a SOTA peak !!!? ??I emailed him to thank him for both the posting of his EFHW tuning experiments 20 years ago which inspired my miniaturized version of his conclusions, and the chase.

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73,? fred kt5x

Fred, what freq(s) will your endfed half wave cover? - ?George

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Depends upon what radio it is used with.?

With the MTR3, 20/30/40 (all the bands covered by the radio)

With the MTR5, 17, 20, 30, 40 (not 15, otherwise all the bands covered by the radio)

With the KH1 w/ATU, 15, 17, 20, 30, 40

With KX2 which adds band capability and ATU, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30, 40, 60.? On 60 antenna acts as a random wire and wants a radial.

fd

Chris, do you mean the broadband matching units? ?Those are copies of what Parfits was selling since the 1980’s.? I built one into a zip case with a short piece of coax attached.? They work, and his design is COOL.? I prefer the tunable design originated by AA5TB as I have found variation in the peaks impact the actual resonance enough that being able to adjust helps.

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Attached is a photo of the AA5TB tunable matching device for EFHW with a tinySWR indicator and plugged directly into an MTR3

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• Fred

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• I really like the end-fed design found at .? He put together a really cool kit that will build various end-fed antennas but also a random wire.? The best part is the focus on compact effecient design.? I've been using these for years and love them.