Thanks for the video, I'm thinking about building a random length antenna and this was a useful video. It was good to see your Station Manager doing some weaving, one of my other hobbies is spinning. This was an offshoot from keeping sheep for many years. 73 G0ACE
This vid is one of your best! / One of my favorites! 30 yrs now in my use in ham/mil. service, nothing, no antennas have ever intrigued me as the ones that use a 9:1 unun , and ones that also use 450Ω terminating resistors. Either monopoles/EFRLW or BBTD's , the mathematical ratio is a masterpiece!!!!!! and for those who search it deep, Tesla was not kidding with his 369 theory and his dominion over radio waves! 73's from SV land !
Michael, really enjoyed the build on the Ares end fed antenna and it really seems to work quite well, and as a matter of fact, I may build one for myself thank you for the info on this one. Thank you for sharing.
Looks like a great antenna ! Thank You for the video Michael. I don't have this one. Have built my own. Since they provide you with 100" of wire, why not make a 30 foot link to add on the end of the 41' for those times you wish to use 80 meters ? Best of both worlds.
Really appreciate you showing all the steps of the work. I did the apollo a while back and was concerned I was doing things right and couldn't find steps.
Excellent video, Michael. This looks like an excellent antenna for both home and field use. Very tasty recipe, too. No sense going hungry when the bands open up! 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).
My PacTenna is 29' in length, primarily using it on 40-17M QRP. We are getting a lot of rain near Rockford, IL this week so am looking for a good day to activate Rock Cut SP from our campsite. Has anyone tried using an aluminum screen as a counterpoise, assuming the feed is within 17" of the ground as previously mentioned? Just curious, I haven't tried it yet, curious how it affects the static VSWR in the 29', 41', & 71' lengths as well as the tuned Bandwidths. I bought an ATU-10 tuner a while back so I'm so curious how it will do also. What isn't cool is the amount of Box Elder & Asian beetles trying to get their own activations in before the next hard frost, LOL. Cheers, Davey --KU9L
I haven't tried using the window screen as a counterpoise with these wire antennas, but it is an interesting thought. Since Monday, we've received 4 inches of rain and now they are talking about snow over the weekend as the high will be in the mid 30's
@@KB9VBRAntennas yeah, the deer hunters want their forests back and us POTA guys best keep warm & dry. Still, the first dry day I will be trying it, lol.
What would be the best random wire length for closer-in (from 0km/mi out to 500km/300mi) NVIS 20-80m? I believe if it gets too long it starts developing lobes off the end that get steeper the longer it gets, so if it's too long I'll put everyone around me in the skip zone. I'm wanting to contact people from just over the closest mountain, they're only about 5km away, so I really want to be as vertical as I can. Would you go with 71' for that? I notice most of your contacts in this activation were at more of a distance from you. Any tips for close-in work? Most advice out there is for DX. I believe getting it down to the ground works better for a more vertical takeoff. And a longer counterpoise I think is supposed to be better - even longer than the antenna, or multiple long ones. Are these correct? Any other thoughts? Thanks! VA7XTK
Good questions. I’m running the hamrs.app logging program on my windows laptop and looking at the POTA.app spotting page on my phone. I spotted myself on POTA so that the hunters know to look for me. I’ll also look at the page to see where other activators are so that I don’t inadvertently set up on their frequency
Hi Mike. It was nice to meet you recently at Radio Expo in IL. It would have been nice to see what the SWR was on all the bands without using a tuner to get an idea how much correction was needed to bring the antenna within an acceptable SWR. I just received an Xtenna that I used last weekend and I loved it. It was resonate on 10, 15, 20 and 40. 17 had high SWR as one would expect. I have 3 RU-vid POTA videos on my RU-vid channel @K9AT As Always Best 73, David K9AT
I measured the SWR when I deployed the antenna, but didn't record it as I was using my smaller Rigexpert Stick analyzer. Roughly speaking, SWR was between 1.8:1 and 2.5:1 for 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10 meters. It was a bit higher on 40m and 80m, between 3:1 and 5:1. I've noticed that in using random wires, the SWR will fluctuate in where and how it is deployed. This is common with this style of antenna as there is a bit more variability in its matching. You can try to perfect it for a single location, but will be wildly off at the next. I checked out your channel after we met at Radio Expo, I'll have to go back and watch the new content.
Thanks for this comparison. I have been eyeing both for a while and have not found any reviews comparing them so great work. Quick question, the WRC advertises that you can turn the tuning “clicker” thing to fine tune your frequency. Do you do this and does the M1ECC rig perform the same way? Thx
The Wolf River Coil does allow you to click for course adjustment and then swivel the collar for fine adjustment. I do find the swivel feature handy, especially on the higher bands when a full click is too much adjustment. I don't have any experience with the M1ECC coil, so I don't know if it has that feature or not.
Probably not. Internal tuners a pretty limited. You will need a tuner of great matching range to get most of the bands. (Michaels tuner is under the radio in this video)
Internal tuners will match at 3:1 or less. External auto tuners will usually handle a 9:1 mismatch and manual tuners even more. The antenna was under 3:1 for all bands with the exception of 80 meters, where it was a bit higher. The FT-710 could probably make it work.
Michael, when using the 9:1 do you use the same counterpoise for 71ft and 41 ft radiators? Do you ever operate withOUT a counterpoise? thanks ! de K8MH
With the random wires I always use the counterpoise. I believe if you go with the shorter 41 foot radiator, about 17 feet of counterpoise is all you need.
Solid video production. Well done. But I do have some questions and comments. I watched the entire video in hopes you would share some commentary on the justification of such a hefty price for less than 20 dollars worth of parts that you have to put together yourself. I can certainly see the joy in completing the project, but it's difficult to believe that you didn't have a single complaint and that at the end, it was worth the price to anyone that actually ends up paying for this. At the very end you said they sent it to you. If you get something for free, in reality it's your payment for promoting an item. I hope you understand the potential for mistrust of your endorsement isn't personal. So here are my questions: Do you find it worth the price tag? Is it justified? Do you truly not have any complaints? If you were to create a similar antenna build yourself, what would you change? Finally, I thought that the step of unwinding the wire just to put it together negated the original effort of winding the wire on the winder to begin with. Why would one of the first steps be to undo what was done? Sure, that's nitpicky, but at the same time a bit of a slap in the face to the customer. Perhaps winding it off winder would make more sense.
In my review videos I don't justify the price of a product unless I feel that it is overwhelmingly out of line with the market. Viewers can make their own determination if a product is worth it to them or not. But since you asked, I believe the antenna kits by CaHR are priced fairly and are in line with the market. I base this on my long experience as a solo entrepreneur who's worked on selling products in niche markets. Parts cost are only a small part of the the expense that it takes to bring something to market and while your estimation of 'less than $20 worth of parts' may be somewhat true, it's also a bit off. Since you'e curious, I did produce a video on making your own random wire end fed antenna. You can look at the parts list and determine if the effort of sourcing all your own parts is worth the cost of buying an all-in-one kit: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D_-aNzrIXWs.html Complaints? I really don't have any about this antenna. It does what it purports to do, the components are of good quality, and construction is well thought out. They use a 22ga silicone wire for the radiator. It is a very nice wire, but my only complaint with it is that it does collect dust and somewhat gets hung up in the brush and brambles. I prefer the PTFE coated wires, but that stuff is even more expensive. If you watched any number of my videos you'll notice two things. 1) I don't do very many product reviews and I am very careful to disclose if I purchased the product or if it was provided in exchange for a review. 2) If I like a product, I will continue to use it again and again. I get many offers to do a review and most of them I turn down. I will not review cheap handheld radios. Nor will I review a product that doesn't fit the scope or mission of the channel. You're free to question my integrity, but you'll find that with watching any amount of my content, that I totally operate my channel above board. I've earned my viewers trust and respect and won't flush that away with a substandard product. Finally, your quibble about unwinding the wire from the frame of the antenna. I don't think the customer cares one way or another on how their wire is shipped. On the frame or separate, it's going to have to be unwound and measured at some point of the construction process.
Hello guys and gals. In my opinion this product is totally worth the $20. I'm running an EFRW myself. I already had the wire and the 140-43 toroidal. I built mine in a 4X4 sealed outdoor electrical box and purchased all of the hardware, so I probably had $12 - $14 in mine. If I would have purchased the wire and the toroidal, it would have probably been $35 or so. PS: I used 14 gauge wire
@@jimmcfall7769 But it doesn't cost $20. It's $79.99 plus shipping. Ultimately, I made one similar using my LDG 9:1 and a piece of wire. Cost me 30 bucks. I'll build another from scratch this winter. Pretty sure I can keep it around 20 bucks. Even though it was unintentional, thanks for making my point.
