For my common mode choke addition to this antenna, see HERE.
My first semi-permanent antenna was a 40m EFHW in my backyard. the wire was strung E-W, and propagated mostly N-S.
After that antenna came down over the winter, I looked into designing a new antenna. The requirements were:
- Must fit it backyard
- Must require less than 50ft of feed line,
- Must tune up on 80m
- Must have better E-W propagation
The design I came up with was to install an 134ft long 80m EFHW antenna in an “L” configuration, with the first 67ft leg running E-W and the second 67ft leg running N-S. I used EZNEC Pro2+ v. 7.0v to model this antenna. My results are below.
Feeling comfortable with the results, I gathered my supplies.
- 1:49 EFHW Balun
- Carabiners
- Speaker wire
- “I” Bolts
- 50ft of coax
- 100ft of polyester rope
Construction photos are below. The antenna wire is highlighted in green.
I used my QRP-Labs QMX+ to run an SWR sweep on various bands. Screenshots of some of the results are below. All bands were less than 3:1 SWR.
After confirming the SWR, I utilized the Reverse Beacon Network to check for propagation. A quick test resulted in the following:
Overall, I am very pleased with the results and performance of this antenna. The “L” configuration is a great way to fit an 80m wire antenna in a limited space. I plan on updating this post with more RBN results and SWR sweeps of other bands.