Operating portable can be very easy, you simply need a bit of wire. Sometimes you don’t have the space for a doublet or a dipole, maybe you are on a beach or holiday let.
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A compact vertical, that needs no ATU on 14 MHz, and you could either use an ATU or shorten it down for operation on 18, 21, 24 and 28 MHz.
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The antenna collapsed is just 35cm long, and once extended is just over 5m. They are fitted with a 10mm screw thread, so you will need an adaptor or a base to accept the coax and provide a ground plane.
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The base for the telescopic antenna can be sourced from the same supplier, and I would suggest you get a ground spike. The ground spike attaches to the M10 and allows you to ground mount the antenna.
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The total cost is around £60 for a multi-band vertical. You will need to make some wire radials for attaching to the M10 ground plate. This setup could provide you with an easy-to-deploy, multi-band vertical suitable for holidays and beach operations.
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So how does it work, well like anything it’s hard to provide hard evidence. It works like a ground-mounted vertical, if you can put it in a low noise environment may be close to the sea I expect very well would be your answer. I have a high-noise floor at home, but I still managed 20 QSO on FT8 with 10w. We also had a solar storm today, so at one point the HF bands had been knocked out completely.
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