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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
