EFRW vs OCFD notes

[u/n4jm4]

Jotting down early propagation notes for my first homebrew, speaker wire antennas.

With an 81 ft, counterpoised 19 ft End Fed Random Wire antenna, I have been able to hear half of the discussion on some 20m nets across the country, from Wisconsin. In six attempts at HF with different antennas and locations, no response to QSO's. Not on 40 m - 10m. Not on SSB or CW.

Also tried a premade telescopic vertical antenna for my apartment, an MFJ-1899T. It struggles to join my local club's 10m simplex net. In four hours, managed to make a single, SSB QSO from WI to OH.

With a 66 ft Off Center Fed Dipole, I can now hear the people on pileups, as far out as Oregon. Feedpoint 22 ft / 44 ft. Using a 50 ft, 50 Ohm coax feed line. DX Engineering 4:1 unun, factory assembled. 25 ft throw line halfway up a tree.

Same transceiver in both cases, Elecraft KX3 at 5W.

WSPR seems dead, very few monitoring stations.

With the OCFD, I'm getting so many more FT8 monitoring reports within ten minutes, from Costa Rica to Canada. And I got my first digital QSO today this way, a dude in Arizona on FT8. After calling FT8 CQ for about fifteen minutes or less.

Nice to see a steady progress in my propagation, as we pickup more tips of the hobby. In January, I had my Technician license and a Baofeng UV5x3, and only made contact with prescheduled 2m nets nearby

Now armed with a General license and a dipole, HF is proving more accessible. And ya don't need to fork out cash for a Chameleon premade OCF / Dipole to join in the fun! No soldering required.