[Elecraft] [KX3] Portable Antenna question

[Fred Jensen]

Buddipole is a good antenna but somewhat heavy and not quick to set up 
and tune.  With the ATU, you can generally set it to a "recipe" and let 
the tuner take care of the rest.  I found verticals worked best, all the 
horizontal configurations [arms up, out, up and down, V, whatever] are 
basically an OCF loaded dipole.  I had and used one for a number of 
years, pretty satisfied.

I sold my BP and bought an AlexLoop.  Very much lighter and smaller, 
sets up much much faster, much easier to QSY, and works as well or maybe 
a little better than the BP.  A little pricey as is the BP, you can HB 
the loop pretty easily.

Many of the SOTA crowd use end-fed half-wave wires ... no ground or 
counterpoise required.  Of course, they are generally doing this on 
mountain tops which helps, but they are universally QRP or close to it.

I've used a 27' end-fed wire with my K2 and KX1.  The ATU loads it fine 
on 30 thru 10, it isn't real effective on 20 and below as you might 
imagine from the short length.

Antennas are the last bastion of ham experimentation, try things out 
once you're making RF from the KX3.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013
- www.cqp.org

On 3/8/2013 7:16 PM, Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT wrote:
> My new KX3 is due to arrive on Monday -- with the KXAT3 tuner.
>
> I saw some discussion of wire lengths that worked well with the tuner,
> and of course, now I can't find it.
>
> I plan on mostly portable operation -- no place where I live for a nice
> antenna (and probably hard to get the OK from management).
>
> Anyone have any practical experience to share?
>
> 73 -- Lynn, WB6UUT
>
> P.S. Hi Lyle
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