ANTENNA HF TAPPED 80/40/20/17/15/12/10/6/2 MOBILE

its a good little antenna but sometimes the SWR can be a little to high

works great i will buy many more soon because i am resseller i recommend this product for those hf radio users

This antenna is useless! First of all it's difficult to mount since it has a male PL-259 connector on the bottom so it needs an SO-239 for mounting or double female SO-239 mounted in a panel in order to connect both the antenna and the cable. It also needs a large ground plane to work. Even though they sell a trunk mount for it there's no way you can use it with that small amount of ground area. It's basically a tuned circuit with a very narrow bandwidth, so you will need an antenna analyzer to tune it, then it will only work on one frequency. If you dare to ever try changing the frequency you will have to tune it up with the analyzer all over again which is a real pain. They have a chart of lengths to set it to for each frequency band but I found that it's not even close and isn't a useful guide since when I got it to work once it was about 3" off from the lengths they give in the chart. Even if you get it to work it's very poorly made and won't hold up very long outside if it's in the weather since the covering is just heat shrink tubing and not weather proof. The 2 small screws that hold the adjustable rods are not very secure so it would probably fall apart if used on a vehicle subject to vibration and if the rod comes loose there is no easy way to put it back to the correct place since it isn't marked. Trying to tune it was such a nuisance that I put it away for a while but recently got it out and tried it again but couldn't get it to tune up for any band this time so it's useless now.

Given it's frequency range, it's small size, and optimum antenna length, once you do the math you'll be scratching your head how the darn thing works. When I was in an apartment I used this as a balcony mounted antenna and rarely got a good SWR match and usually found it difficult to hear any one else over the spectrum.I tried it mobile with only marginal improvement, and as you would expect, I'd have to stop the truck and get out to move the wire to another band.In the land of Ham-band antenna's it's at the low price end (about $65 or a little higher), I didn't expect great things from it, and so I got what I paid for.

I will echo what another reviewer said, this antenna is extremely narrow band. To operate on lower bands you will need to tune the antenna to your desired frequency using an antenna analyzer. Once you have some frequencies picked out, mark the antenna shaft with a permanent marker so you can re-tune quickly.The bandwidth on 80 meters is extremely narrow (the only band I tested so far), with SWR rising sharply on either side of the resonant frequency.I think this antenna would work well for portable use on a narrow band digital mode like PSK31 where you aren't tuning all around the band hunting for contacts. If you already know what frequency you'll be using and don't plan to change often, then it's a reasonable compromise vs. the cost of a well made screwdriver antenna or an antenna tuner.Even with a tuner I suspect you could quickly exceed the maximum mismatch the tuner can handle as you tune away from the resonant frequency.I tested mine mounted to a chain link fence which acted as a makeshift counterpoise. The SWR dipped to about 1.3:1 on the 80 meters band. I haven't tried it mobile, but I have a jeep and they are notoriously problematic for mobile installations anyway.