[Elecraft] [KX3] Portable Antenna question

[Jim Brown]

On 3/8/2013 7:52 PM, Mike WA8BXN wrote:
> The answer may depend a lot on what bands you want to operate on.

It also depends on where you will go to operate and how you will get 
there. My neighbor Glen, W6GJB, travels every month or so on business, 
and likes to operate from his hotel room. He and I have also driven t to 
mountain tops, and some folks like to hike and climb.

Glen has accumulated a nice collection of telescoping rods of varying 
extended length and collapsed length, and several ways to hold them in 
place -- things like tripods, clamps, etc. He also has several lengths 
of small diameter wire that he can spool and unspool to be radials, a 
counterpoise, or a long wire out the window or into a tree, and he's 
developed some neat ways to quickly rig and attach them. One of his 
objectives is to be able to carry it onto an airplane, a second is to 
fit it in checked luggage.

  I think all of his ideas are good ones, and NONE of them involve 
loading coils.  Loading coils are lossy, and the last thing we need when 
running QRP is loss. Glen first objective is to make his radiator a 
quarter wave, and it's pretty practical to do that with these 
collapsible wands for 20-10M. 30M and 40M are tougher, but possible.  
There's a neat black fibreglass telescoping wand (distributed by a 
German ham) that extends to 33 ft long. Tape the right length of #22 
wire to it and you've got a full size 30M or 40M vertical!  MFJ makes 
some wands and tripods.  You have to poke around to find the other stuff.

The message here is the the KX3 is a radio, and the antennas that work 
well with it are the same that work with any radio. The old standby 
fundamental types of antennas are still the winners - long wires, 
verticals, some sort of counterpoise. Avoid driven elements close to a 
half wave length because their high Z makes them hard to load.

73, Jim K9YC