end fed wire 11meter antenna

an 11 meter end fed wire would be 36 foot 3. one full wave

half wave would be 18 foot1.5

a quarter wave would be 9 foot 0.75

but why not a full 2 wave antenna at 72 foot 6

or a full 3 waves antenna at 108 foot 9

if you think theses are to big , remember radio hams work on 40 meters and 80 meters.  at half wave 40 meters is 66 foot and 80 meters is 132 foot.

the gain on long wires both receive and transmit is fantastic
just something to think about next time you want a horizontal antenna and cheap to make.

just remember do you want half of something or do you want it all or seconds or thirds, some people settle for a quarter, time to start being greedy

Hi Glenn,

I've moved this posting into the 'Antenna Discussion' section of the forum for you. 
This is the more appropriate area of the forum than the new members section so should been more easily found by members who may wish to discuss the subject matter at hand. I hope this helps.  


I have seen suggestions of multiple wavelength long wire antennas before but found out first hand that they don't perform as well as expected. It might seem at first that by hanging more copper or antenna wire in the air that you'll somehow gain something, but this is one example where I found the old adage of 'less is more' comes in to play.

I've found what is hopefully a useful link explaining the issues surrounding multiple wavelength long wire antennas for the benefit of anyone wishing to discover more :-

https://vu2nsb.com/antenna/wire-antennas/multiband-efhw-antenna/


All the best,
Victor

if this is the case victor, what would be the point of a multi, end fed half wave antenna. (efhw)

half wave on 40m

1wave on 20m

1.5wave on 15m

2 full waves on 10m

are radio hams fooling them selves?

are you saying that if i put up a 80m efhw antenna, that 10 meters  would be rubbish because it is now working at multiple wave lengths. to much wire? or are you saying its different for 11m.

glenn north lincs
What balun or unun would you be using on your 11m end fed wire.
Are you licenced.

Hi Alan. I just looked up Glen's intro post and see that he is licenced and is using such a setup. I did try a very long wire for 11 when I was young, but it didn't work for me at all. I didn't use a balun back then though and the wire was only a few foot off ground, was literally just playing around learning.

Glen, as well as Alan's balun question, can I ask how high the wire is and do you have any part of it vertical? Does it work for you locally, or is it just only a skip monster? Am interested just to ponder options for other bands in future.

A long wire resonant antenna on a single band such as 11m will have many lobes in the horizontal plane so if the area of interest lines up with a lobe say around 045,135,225,315 deg for a full wave horizontal wire it would perform well but at 0,90,180,270 it would have deep nulls . At two wavelengths long the four main lobes move to 60,120,240 and 300 with the addition of smaller lobes around 20,160,200 and 340 but the deep nulls at 90 and 180 are still there ( theoretical)

hi alan and sangue

i use a 40m efhw antenna with a 49-1 balun, shop bought. (£39.00) on ebay

swr on 40m, 20m 10m is around 1-1.5 on 11m its 2-2.7

i use an at100 auto atu (£71.50) on amazon, to bring down swr to 1-1.7 because wire is not cut for 11m

no part of antenna is vertical.

i have it at around gutter height (22ft ish)

being horizontal not much good on local, would suggest using a vertical, but great on dx.

as for height, watch dx commander you tube channel, look for nvis, as for vertical check out his rapide

ground mounted vertical antenna, no height but a lot of ground wires

good point bean, but the greater the amount of wave lengths the greater the number of lobes and gain, the increase in lobes reduces the size of the nulls

Right i am with you now Glen.
I thought you had a long wire specifically for the 11m band.
I to have used the same 40m efhw and with you on the 11m local useless to put it mildly lol.
Made many good dx contacts on it but i am in the process of taking it down today as the cobweb has taken over.
Wasn't being funny asking if you had a licence it was just the subject and the bit you said "are radio hams fooling themselves" if you get me.

the length of wire determines the band or frequency alan

glenn north lincs wrote:

the length of wire determines the band or frequency alan

I did know that.
As i said i thought you had a specific long wire for the 11m band and asked what balun or unun but you have said that it was a 40m efhw so sorted now.

All antenna choices are about your chosen (unavoidable or enforced?) compromises, as explained already, pattern per band is the biggy here. You want a "good" pattern, whatever you personally deem that to be for your QTH, goals and way of operating.

If you want to be on many bands with 1 wire you have accept the compromised pattern produced on some bands (typically higher bands) for it to be the one for you.

I compromise as well.. 1 monoband antenna per band.. my chosen compromise is the hassle and time if I want to switch band, but I have well documented, reliable patterns that work as well as possible given 1 wire design and install options. And what is DX in your mind? ... this is quite important. A good DX antenna for 2k-3k-4k miles may not necessarily be as good a dx antenna for 6-10k+ miles.

Installation specifics are very important as well, there is more than one way to put an antenna up... details can matter.

What defines a really good dx antenna for me is working very long dx in poor conditions. A random bit of wire 6-8m long can be tuned and work the world in great conditions, but this is a very low technical bar. You won't be working that much DX on some bands for much of the sunspot cycle.

I have learnt a lot about 20m the last few months, I focus on this band as it is enough to be getting on with and a good bet for DX at this time. I am having much greater successes of late. It involves a lot of effort though. 6-8k mile contacts are becoming semi regular with 100W and a single wire.... many refinements of antennas and QTH choice have been made to achieve this in low SFI situations. It is hard work, but mainly enjoyable.. there have been frustrations along the way but I have worked through them.

I look forwards to the relatively easy 10m band being open more reliably. Here you can punch hard with 100W and an elevated mono band vertical, some even with some gain..... all in good time.

Good article Victor I am just reading it. I will add that one of the migratory issues I experienced with cb to ham is the relatively long wavelengths (20m-160m). Long wavelengths mean real practical issues with getting antennas off the earth in such a manner to realize low angle gain, minimize ground losses and clear obstacles for the really long DX.

Yes you will do it with pretty much anything when the sun is 1/4 black with sunspots but until then you need the best antenna as high as possible that you can afford / be bothered to erect. May these days soon come to pass again:



The main factor in deciding what you will end up doing is space and noise. If you have space and want a non beam solution a fan dipole is a good place to look, potentially less problematic than a multiband end fed. (RFI and RF in the shack) Or think verticals albeit with increased noise unless you live in a very RF quiet place. The real downside in an urban area is noise for the vertical, it can be a real pain in the ear and of course obscure the interesting stations until everyone is booming in on a coat hanger stuck in the back of the radio.

95pct of us have some kind of compromises to juggle, the trick is finding what options offer the least compromises for what your practicalities are vs what you want to achieve. And it is a lot of work to go through it. It is a lot of work for just 1 band never mind 4.

@ILikeRadioSoDoYou,

I'm glad someone found the article of use or an interesting read and was provided as a helpful example of issues that can be faced when utilising EFHW or longwire antennas. I've always said that any antenna is better than no antenna but as you rightly state we do have to juggle around with compromise antennas. (My own eventual conclusion was a multiband fan dipole array for general HF but would seriously consider a single band antenna system for DX work.)

Antennas are a very interesting aspect of radio pursuits but surprisingly often a contentious subject when discussed or debated openly. (Unusually this happens more with HF antennas than VHF/UHF where my current interests lay). I'd be the first to admit that it would take a very long time to understand every aspect of antennas from theory to computer modelling let alone the practicalities associated with building them. I can only humbly thank those that spent a lifetime understanding such subjects and sharing their data/discoveries freely for others to enjoy and progress. "On the shoulders of giants", as they say.


Well I'm glad that moving this posting did garner a wider audience, it could have easily have been lost and I thank everyone that interacted.

BTW - loving the historical sunspot image, the proverbial piece of wet string can do wonders under such conditions but a good antenna helps.


All the best,
Victor

Hi all,

I too found this very interesting and for a great number of years used a EFW of various types and one design I found that was great for small space gardens and area was the so called "Magitenna". It was basically a 9:1 UnUn to allow Coax feed and only 7.6m of wire, seemed to work best as a sloper for me anyway. At the time I was using a Rig with no internal ATU and the LDG Tuner would have no trouble on any band between 40m and 6m.

Because of my recent trouble with a 11m vertical, I ran this "Magitenna" up yesterday temporary to try to get the CT000 club call from Buxton. I realised that they are too close for a wire , so have not been hearing them, but have heard the usual German, French and Italians coming in ( not too strong, but enough to hear). 

I do realise again this is a Compromise, but I believe from my experience anything on HF will always be a compromise because there are more factors involved in getting the best on these bands. VHF and UHF for instance, relies on line of sight more than antennas in some cases.

Just thought I would resurrect this post as I am experimenting with antennas to try to get a compromise to work on 10m, 11m, and 12m only. I don't want any other bands to operate on.

Cheers all thanks for listening to my "twopennorth" Tony

BAREFOOT wrote:

Just thought I would resurrect this post as I am experimenting with antennas to try to get a compromise to work on 10m, 11m, and 12m only. I don't want any other bands to operate on.

Been thinking and playing around with ideas for the same myself. A cage is one idea I had - in THIS thread. Not built one yet. What I have done though is made wider elements out of ladder/window line, also detailed in that thread, which expanded the usable bandwidth over a single wire. Have a very low swr on much of 11m and the SSB portion of 10m, and it's working well for me. Doesn't cover 12m well though.

Maybe you could make an efhw for 11m in the same fashion using ladder line for the wire and see how much bandwidth it gets you?

Experimented with a very low mounted end fed wire over the past week. Not an efhw, a random length non-resonant wire antenna which is just over a full wave on the 11m band. Fed with a 9:1 unun and mounted only 1m for the main part along the top of a wooden fence partially though a bush all stealth like.

Unfortunately with the early summer skip ending I haven't had a lot to work with to draw proper conclusions. The receive on 11m has been great for the few stations I did hear. Not sure if this is down to the long length, the low positioning out of noise, or combination of. Made one short skip contact into Germany on 11 and one on 10, so it can get out. The couple of stations in the town 15 miles away that I occasionally talk to came in at the same signal strength as they do in on the inverted V in the loft, but I wasn't able to break into them.

It did work well on 20m though. Really surprised, I thought with it being so low I would be firing a lot of the signal straight up into space, or the ground would be swallowing it. Definitely not a DX antenna, but with power as low as 4W made it into France and Italy, and with 10W managed some around eastern Europe and into Russia with one the other side of the Black Sea about 2000 miles.

Fingers crossed we'll get a bit of winter skip this year on 11 and I'll try it again on there then.

Your 72ft6 antenna is no longer an 11m antenna its a 22m antenna yea itl work on 11 but will be shat