My experience with HyEndFed 8 band antenna – bend it like Beckham…

In an earlier post I described my experiences with the HyEndFed 5 band antenna but for several reasons I decided to quickly replace it with the 8 band version for 10/12/15/17/20/30/40/80 meters.

The reasons for this was, for one thing, that I soon discovered that I was missing the WARC bands for different reasons. One of them is contests. Contests are fun – when you are participating. When not, it makes the bands very hard to use. You will have a hard time finding non contest stations and sometimes I just switched the radio off, waiting for the contest to be over. The WARC bands are contest free and became my go to bands during contests.

Another reason for replacing the 5 band antenna was that it is rated for 200 watts SSB PEP. Nothing more than that is mentioned on their website when it comes to power. It was when unpacking the antenna, reading the instructions, I realized this means 30 watts limit for CW and DIGI-modes. It would have been very nice to mention this on the website as well. I am doing about 98% of my QSO:s in CW and I like to be able to use my rig’s full 100 watts of power.

The third reason I initially choose the 5 band antenna was it’s length – 23 meters. This is just about the size I can fit in on my property. But at the time considering a new antenna, I realized that endfed half waves (EFHW) actually doesn’t have to be installed in a straight line. Bend it like Beckham 🙂 It can be installed in an angle for example. The radiation pattern will of course suffer but they still work. The 8 band antenna is 40 meters long, so to fit it in, I must install it in an angle.

So I decided to replace it with the 1 kW model of HyEndFed 8 band antenna. I used the same fur tree as a fixing point, but insted of having the end at the tree, I now has a bend. I selected the 1 kW model to be able to cope with my 100 watts CW. The model chosen was the one with aluminium plate and strand relief on the plate.

I can use the antenna on most bands without a tuner but I do actually use my ICOM AT-180 on most bands to get the SWR down to as close as 1:1. With the AT-180 it actually also tunes on 160 meters but my QRM levels on that band are so high so I haven’t tried it in a QSO yet.

It have worked all other bands with the antenna I am quite happy with it, and considering it is a multiband antenna I think it is a very good compromise.