[TowerTalk] Wire antenna?

[john at kk9a.com]

It needs no tuner or counterpoise and it has great eham reviews!  How  
does this work?

John KK9A



David Gilbert xdavid at cis-broadband.com

The EFHW-8010 gets rave reviews, but I'm fundamentally suspicious of any
antenna that covers that wide a range without tuning.  There have to be
losses somewhere to get that.

Those same reviews also claim similar results for installations 6 feet
off the ground versus 60 feet.  That also doesn't make sense given the
effect that ground typically has on the feedpoint of a horizontally
polarized antenna without a lot of loss.

I couldn't find anyone who had done a real time A vs. B comparison
against, for example, a center fed dipole at 40 feet on 20 meters. I'm
not saying that the EFHW-8010 isn't a practical single antenna for a
given set of constraints, but I'd bet a lot of money that you could do
better with a collection of other properly chosen wire antennas if you
have the space (presumably you do if you can put up a 130' long
EFHW-8010) and some decent trees.

And if your ground conductivity isn't too bad, I'd even consider an
Inverted-L or two with VOR-type counterpoises before I'd rely on
something that physically shouldn't work without a lot of loss ...
especially if the distance from the antenna to the shack is short enough
that you could use a tuner for operation on multiple bands without a lot
of feedline loss due to SWR.

My two cents worth ...

73,
Dave   AB7E