HyEndFed 3 Band + Spiderbeam 12m Pole = Easy and Effective HF Portable Vertical Antenna 

Thank you very much! I hope you know we have the same feelings for our southern neighbours.

Congratulations on getting your license, Gary! I hope you have as much fun with your 817 as I have with mine. It's great to hear that my videos have inspired you, thank you for letting me know. 73 from VE3TWM.

Thank you for sharing your experience, Mark!

Graduated to the 60 footer. My club members are getting their own units. Hawaii today on CQ DX Contest.

Hi Mark, where are you located in NJ? I’m near Princeton, NJ and a member of W2ZQ. Thanks, Anthony, KD2NHG

Hi Erik, thank you for sharing your experience.

Thank you for leaving a comment, Roland. Have fun with your QRP camping and good luck with the table flipping! 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

+Frank Fullum Congratulations on your new license, Frank! I hope your new antenna system is working well for you. Thank you for watching and for the compliment, I really appreciate it. 73 from VE3TWM.

Thank you for sharing your experience!

Sounds like fun, Don! I used to dream about owning a van with a 109" whip when I was a broke teen with a second hand Realistic Navaho 23 channel rig (mid 70's). Thank you for sharing your memories.

Thank you, Barry! All the credit for the genius move of upending the picnic table goes to Randy VE3OZR.

Thank you for leaving your comment, Vagel. I really appreciate hearing about your experience. Well done with your antenna. I expect you'll have a lot of success with it. 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

+VK5STU You're welcome Stu, thank you for watching. Other folks reading this should check out VK5STU's channel, he's done some nice videos.

Thank you! If you get one, you will enjoy it.

Thank you!

Sounds exciting, Mikael! When you get your hands on that 817 and pair it up with a good antenna, you will be blown away by what you can do. Have fun with the scouts and plant the seeds for future ham radio operators. 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

Will do! The local ham radio club are nextdoor to the scouts. I'm thinking JOTA next autumn. (To be fair, I expect they've alread participated, but I'm planning to be part of it.) :-)

Good tip, thank you for sharing.

I agree!

Nice! I've got a question for you...how far up the mast did you affix the high end of the endfed, and did the mast bend much once erected with the antenna connected? 73 from VE3TWM.

Hi. This was my first ever set up. I have two sections above the end of the antenna. . Next time I’ll take it to the very top and reply back here. 18m pole sire attracts attentions. I can see it a few blocks from my house! I made a contact in Nevada on 40m with 5w!

Thank you, Richard! 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

Thank you, Alan!

You're welcome, and thank you for your comment!

You're welcome, Jean-Pierre! 73 from VE3TWM.

Thank you, Allan!

+Jonathan Steiner You're welcome, and thank you for watching!

Thank you, Alan! You are really going to enjoy the Spiderbeam pole. 73 from VE3TWM.

+William Jordan Thank you William!

+UPGardenr You're welcome! Thank you for watching.

+Chris Lassaline Thank you Chris! Since the antenna is rated for 100W it would work fine with the 857D. As far as I know there is no internal tuner on the 857D. You'll need a tuner to safely operate the rig on bands other than 10, 20 and 40 with the HyEndFed 3 band.

You're welcome, thank you for watching.

Thank you for letting me know!

Thank you!

+Joe McEarchern You're welcome Joe!

You're welcome!

Thank you for your comment and question. You've made an excellent choice for your antenna system. To answer your question about the antenna wire being too brittle, I haven't found that to be the case with the HyEndFed antennas I've used. Admittedly, I rarely use trees to get my antennas up in the air. But I have have pulled the wires through trees after pulling down the telescopic poles the end was attached to, and experienced no issues to date. I don't pull the wire like a crazy man, though. I take my time and if necessary, finagle the wire through the tricky bits.

Hi Rick, thank you very much for the compliment, I truly appreciate it. I would like to preface what I am going to say with a large disclaimer: I am all for antenna experimentation, and I am definitely not an antenna engineer. Now with that out of the way, consider half of your antenna lying on the ground (i.e. the shield of the coax). I don't suppose it's likely to work as well as having the entire antenna up and in the air. That is what this new breed of end fed half waves do for you, get all of the radiating element up where it can do the most good. I am not discouraging you from trying, in fact I applaud the spirit of trying to build something effective. Have at it and learn something. I hope this has been of some value to you.

Thank you! Real Canadian here 🇨🇦😂

Thank you! There is no metal bracket attached to the matching unit. HyEndFed does sell some models that come with a metal bracket, but the antenna shown in this video is not one of those..

Hello David, thank you for watching the video. I ran the wire straight down the pole until it came into close proximity of the metal picnic table legs. If the wire got too close to the legs, the antenna would detune. To avoid this, I pulled the wire away at an angle. If I had been using a support that had no metal, I could have run the wire straight down to the ground.

It should. Send an email to Ron at HyEnd Company. He's really helpful.

Hi Michael, thank you for watching and for your comments. Congratulations on your new gear! To ensure the sections do not collapse when deployed, try using hose clamps and cut pieces from a bicycle inner tube (or other rubber-like material) to put between the clamps and the mast. You want a material that will compress under pressure from the clamp and grab onto the pole. Just don't over tighten the clamps or you risk damaging the fiberglass pole. 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

Hi Noel, thank you very much! - Here's the lowdown...with the HyEndFed, the length of coax is not critical as it with some other brands/designs of endfed antennas. This is because the coax is not used as part of the antenna. - I never use a station ground, either at my home station or when operating portable. I've heard the arguments for and against and to me the against makes more sense that the for. - There are multiple HyEndFed models with varying power ratings. The one I used in this video is rated for a full 100 watts. 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

Hi Oscar, either way is fine. The straight up method will result in the lowest angle of radiation making the antenna omnidirectional and also better for DX. The sloper has a bit of gain in the direction of the slope and a null in the opposite direction.

Hi Eddie, I've never missed having an eyelet.

You've got it. Sloper or as a horizontal up high and in the clear will yield the best results.

Thank you, Dave! I am currently using the 3 band as my home antenna, having just substituted it for the 5 band I had up earlier. The 5 band worked well (I have another video showcasing that model). I'm looking forward to seeing how the 3 band works as a vertical compared to the inverted V configuration the 5 band was in.

Thank you! The one I have is the 100 watt version. I acquired that one so I could it use with a variety of rigs. The 100 watt version can definitely be used with the 7300.

In this video, I did have the antenna oriented vertically, but due to the wire being longer than the mast I had to run the excess at the bottom away from the mast. One day I should try running the 3-band vertically from the top of my 50 foot DX-Wire mast.

Hi Michael, you ar really going to like the Spiderbeam. Yes, the length of the 3 Band Classic was an ideal match for the Spiderbeam pole and that drove me to make this video. I never use a tuner with my 817. As you may have gathered, I believe in using resonant antennas and staying within their resonant range when using the 817. All in an effort to keep the finals healthy and the antenna efficiency high. Let me know how you make out with the homebrew endfed!

Tracey: Your absolutely right. After I had wrote my entry, that night I changed my plan a bit. I received the Spiderbeam it is outstanding! I've obtained and using a SOTABeams antenna now. It's a SOTABeams Band Hopper 2 dual band 20/40m that is a dipole and you connect two gator clips together to change from 20m to 40m. Very simple and effective. 1:1 on 20m and on 40m. This is the link: www.sotabeams.co.uk/two-band-portable-dipole-antenna-system/ If you watch the video its really informative on how fast these things go up and are operational. No Tuning! I'm not kidding the antenna goes up in 7-8 minutes easy and I installed it at 6m on my Spiderbeam. I've set it up as an inverted vee. I'll obtain a smaller pole for backpacking but for now mine works great. Another fun item that I found out through Cliff (QRP School) is the QRPguys.com EFHW Mini Tuner kit $25. You wind the two toroids and solder the parts together and you have an endfed QRP tuner that goes at the end of a wire and a counterpoise. The PC board even has the wire lengths to cut to printed on the board. Works good for QRP. Another Note: You know that wobbling knob on your FT-817? If you push on that knob you can traverse across the frequency faster too. Enjoy your videos Tracey. Keep up your excellent endeavors.

Thank you for your comments, Michael!

I have not seen the MFJ pole, but the Spiderbeam is top quality. Given my past experience with MFJ products, it's the Spiderbeam all the way.

I have 8 of them and 4 of the aluminum. They have quite a bit of play in the interconnects, so stacking 8 of them gets a little scary without guy ropes even in a slight breeze. I used two aluminum poles at the bottom, clamped them to a cemented in fence post, and it still had more movement than I liked at the top. If it had been in the middle of an open field, I could have overlooked it for a temporary setup up, but I had it up near my house. It is also rather difficult to join them together and walk them up as the pole bends quite a bit even using the hinged stake base.

Thank you!

Hello Fabio, thank you for your question. The HyEndFed 3 Band is impervious to rain, just make sure you weatherproof the coax connection. 73 from Tracy VE3TWM.

Most are unaware that there are a couple of different types of endfed antennas...those that require counterpoises and those that don't. The HyEndFeds do not require a counterpoise and are not designed to take advantage of one. You can add a counterpoise but doing so will not positively impact the performance of these antennas, so I do not use one. Simply put, an endfed that requires a counterpoise is either a dipole or an off-center fed dipole. The counterpoise is the missing portion of the antenna. Getting the counterpoise up off the ground will result in better radiation of the signal, but by deploying such a configuration you have moved away from what is considered an endfed antenna.

Bungee cords or hose clamps. If using hose clamps, use something to protect the pole from cracking (e.g. pipe insulation) and don't overtighten.

Thanks! I assume the fence must not be in contact with the antenna itself.

Correct...pull the antenna away from the pole well above the top of the fence so the metal in the fence does not interact with the antenna. Poor SWR will result if the antenna gets too close to the fence.

Thanks again for your help - I really enjoy your videos.

I'm really sorry for the delay in response...either I missed this or RU-vid is having an issue in the reporting on comments (my vote). I had no issues with the SWR in the vertical orientation. The SWR was just as good vertical as a sloper. 73 from VE3TWM.

@@OutdoorsOnTheAir Thank you Tracy, not a problem at all. I have the HyEndFed installed vertical and SWR is absolutely fine on all 3 bands. No tuner needed. Hope to talk to you on the bands! 73 de PD9RD.

Hi, Tommy. Jackite is the brand name of the other pole. Google them, they are quite popular and reasonably priced.

Thank you! 73 from VE3TWM.

As far as I know, you have to order them from the Netherlands. I still consider them worth the money, though. The HyEndFeds perform well, plus they are easy to deploy and will last for years.

Outdoors On The Air ok thanks. with the Spiderbeam on the way and now this next HyEndFed order this video had got around 250$ out of me 😫

I truly believe you will enjoy that combination. Let me know how it works out for you.

I used the original FT-817 mic and the Yaesu 817-compatible DTMF mic when I had my 817.

Sadly, I am not aware of a Canadian reseller of these products.

@@OutdoorsOnTheAir well thanks for the reply 73s va3kil

Gracias! 73 from VE3TWM.

Ground wave.

Yes, those are two of the orientations the manufacturer recommends. I wanted to see how irt would work as a vertical for those with limited real estate.

@@OutdoorsOnTheAir Thanks mate... I owe those pieces of equipment you mention , and an FT-818ND. The space i have available is unrestricted only on hight. That is why i got the tallest available ( 20 meters ) SpiderBeam.

The Spiderbeam mast is a beast.

@@OutdoorsOnTheAir thank you. Your proper Canadian accent has convinced me that this is the truth. I will buy one now. Thank you, Sir.

That's contesting for you.

@@OutdoorsOnTheAir My point is if the other side asked for your call sign 5 times, then it's definitely no 59!

Lay it on me, I have broad shoulders 😀