After acquiring my first half wave end fed by PA3EKE (HyEndFed) I was curious how it would perform compared to my Ventenna dipole.
The Ventenna is a portable dipole - developed in and sold from the US - that consists of various elements that you can screw together to make a resonant dipole for different bands. When I started on HF in 2010 I used this antenna in the attic to make my first contacts.
The HyEndFed is an end fed wire antenna. PA3EKE sells it in single and multiband configuration. The first one I bought was the 20m 300w PEP version.
For the test I set up the Ventenna portable
dipole on a aluminum push up mast @ 9m and the HyEndFed end fed half wave wire vertically on a Spieth “fishing rod” at 12m (feeding point at 2m).
Ventenna dipole on push up mast |
The
dipole was turned into the direction of the station being worked.
There was a considerable amount of QSB on 20m making the comparison difficult. Outcome after 2 hours of testing:
o Local contacts (40km
range) reported 2 to 3 s-units of difference in favour
of the vertical wire
o European contacts
(2000km range) reported no significant differences in the two set-ups
o DX contacts (US and
Canada, 6000km range) reported 1 s-unit of difference in favour
of the vertical wire