Hawaii EARC 6-40M End-Fed Antenna

A little while ago I picked up a 6 – 40M end-fed matchbox antenna from the Hawaii Emergency Amateur Radio Club, for field use. It operates using similar principals to the Ultimax 100 that I use at my QTH.

Both units consist of a single wire antenna with a matching unit at the feed point, however, the Ultimax is advertised as being usable from 6 to 80M. I haven’t had much luck with Tx on bands lower than 40M.

The matching unit on the HI EARC is much smaller than the one on the Ultimax, so it’s better suited for portable operations.

Today I got the chance to try out the HI EARC antenna and while this is hardly a comprehensive test, my first impressions are good. Rx during my daytime 20M test seems comparable to the Ultimax 100 as does my Tx propagation, according to pskreporter.info.

My quick and dirty test setup looked like this:

I used some electral tape to attach the end of the antenna wire to the tip of a Jackite 31-foot telescoping kite pole, then propped up the pole with the magnolia in my front yard. The pole wasn’t long enough to fully extend the wire so I put the matching unit with feed point on the plastic lawn chair to the left.

For a feed line I used a 25-foot piece of RG-8X coaxial cable coming from my LDG IT-100 tuner. With my Icom 7200 and this antenna setup I was able to get a QSO with a station in Windsor, Ontario, using 50W on 20M PSK-31. I can’t leave it up for long because the XYL threw a fit about me having this in the front yard. Future tests will be in the field.

I’ll post a follow up after I get the chance to use the antenna some more.