[TowerTalk] 43' verticals

[Barrie Smith]

I'm seeking advice regarding the 43' verticals I see advertised, both from MFJ and DX egineering.

While regional babbling on 75 and 160M is not my primary purpose year-round, I do like to chat with friends during the winter, mostly on (gasp) AM.

My antenna now is a very low 400' doublet, fed with open-wire line.  It works well for regional contacts.

The problem is that I'm using a home-brew, great, giant, truely-balanced, link-coupled tuner to "match" the 50 ohm output of my transmitter (a transmitter, not a linear) to the 600 ohm line.

While this tuner works great, QSYing is an enormous PITA.  It takes three to five minutes to retune everything when I move more than a few KC.

My thought is that if I had the 43' vertical, I could run the coax out of the transmitter, skipping the tuner, and when I wanted to QSY, I'd simply redip the final and be on my way.  Link-coupled finals match just about anything.

So, how well would this 43' vertical work on the 200 to 1000 mile range?

The price of the MFJ vertical is much less than the DX Engineering.  Is the added cost of the DXE worth it?

Any help appreciated.

73,

Barrie, W7ALW, DN36au,
QRV 6M, 432 & 1296 EME