[Scan-DC] Great HF Antenna

Tue, 14 Oct 2003 20:16:27 EDT

All,

First I'll start by saying that I have no commercial, personal or other 
connections with either Grove Enterprises or PAR Electronics.

I thought I'd pass on some insights and observations on my latest purchase, 
the PAR EZ-SWL end-fed HF antenna.

A little background. I live in a suburban development which happens to be 
VERY near a very busy, sprawling major airport (5 mi from Baltimore-Washington 
International). I also have very large electric transmission lines running about 
150 ft behind my house. Added to this are such "wrinkles" as above-ground 
power & cable lines to my house and a small back yard.  As you can see, an 
outside HF antenna really isn't in the cards.

I had been using a 66-ft center fed dipole which I had put up in my attic 
which is about 20 ft above the ground.  It served me quite well, albeit it was 
quite a noisy antenna probalby due to the in-house interference from dimmers, 
flourescent & halogen lights, several TV's, kitchen appliance, etc.  The usual 
stuff.

M/T's Sept issue had Larry Van Horn's review of the PAR EZ-SWL antenna. After 
I read it I said, " PAR Electronics must have had me in mind when they 
developed this antenna." They were advertising a 45-ft antenna that could be 
deployed in several configurations---important for me because I only have a little 
over 34-ft of usable attic space to play with. At $59.95 (from Grove) I thought 
I'd give it a try--especially if it was as good as Larry's review said it was.

I had it up in the attic and running about 15-20 minutes after the UPS guy 
dropped it off. The construction of the antenna is superb---it's very ruuged, 
easy to deploy, and a cinch to hook up.  This is very important to me since I'm 
" technically challenged." I have it hooked up to my R-75 with 50-ft of coax 
into an antenna switch so I can still use the dipole along with the EZ-SWL. 
Attic space limitations precluded me putting it in a straight horizontal 
position, or as a sloper.  So I have it deployed in an horizontal L-shape, the long 
part of the "L" being about 32-ft long and the shorter leg about 13 ft.

After using it for two days all I can say is WOW !!!! What an antenna. It's 
extremely quiet, much more so than the dipole. I'm using the factory-supplied 
deafult ground position with no external ground. Not only is it quieter than 
the dipole, to my ears it's also more sensitive. On the ALE nets that I listen 
to, I'm consistently getting significantly higher BER & S/N readings than with 
the dipole. Voice nets are much clearer.  The signals I'm hearing with the SWL 
are tempting me to look into more types of digital decoding.

Using the antenna switch I can check the EZ-SWL's performance against the 
dipole and the SWL wins hands down.  Don't get me wrong, the dipole is a good 
antenna under the conditions that I have it set up---- but the SWL is just so 
much better. 

Bottom line:  If you have space or other restrictions that preclude an 
outdoor antenna at all or limit what you can out outdoors then I'd say give the SWL 
a look. If, however, you have to put your antenna indoors, like me, then by 
all means, in my opinion, you couldn't do better than the EZ-SWL.  I'm tempted 
to get another one and deploy it up in the attic in a different configuration 
and do away with the dipole all together. Ah-----If I had two of these deployed 
on opposite orientations---look out !!!!!  But that's food for thought at a 
future time.

RON([email protected])
Utility Station Monitoring
Maryland, USA
Icom R-75 w/33-ft TFD & 45-ft EZ-SWL

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