WHY MY MATCHBOX IS DIFFERENT
I
have a unique toroid, wire and wind combination that I customize for my units. After many YEARS and many dollars spent in R&D I finally found the best working
combination of toroid and wire size, and wind configuration and type. Simply put, my unit is NOT
a "google how to" and throw together unit. I take pride in my work and
products and make them the best I can.
This unit will allow you to run an end fed dipole (1 single wire) on most bands with just a single wire and radio+tuner. This unit is made to tune well with even picky built in radio tuners.
Every factory radio we could find with a built in tuner could tune this antenna perfectly on 80-10 meters and most can tune it perfectly on 6 meters as well. I advertise this as an antenna for 80-10 but I consider that a minimum with many built in tuners capable of a great match on 6 meters as well. (your setup will determine this)!
My matchbox is made with a larger toroid than most here and solid copper wire allowing more power to
run
through it. You can run from QRP to 150Watts PEP and 60W digi modes.
This is accomplished with a trifilar wound
unun (not balun) transformer at a 9:1 ratio. How this works is really
quite simple. Running a standard dipole with 2 elements has about a 72
ohm feed point at the center but end feeding a dipole will result in
impedance levels from 1800 to 5000 ohms! That's way too much for a tuner
to handle right?
Well that's what this matchbox takes care of.
Simply put it brings the impedance down to levels that tuners can deal
with and the wire length shipped with the antenna creates a good match for all band tuning.
Most users will find no rf issues and find no rf choke is needed. That said, using a GOOD rf choke is always good ham practice and I do have my own designed
choke/s with full choking specifications listed with the one authorized
distributor for them. It can be found by putting the eBay item number in
the eBay search bar. That number is 264946030545
HOW TO DEPLOY
First
off you will need a tuner! These are made to be used with an antenna tuner. The bands you can
tune up and work depends on your tuner.
Use at least 16 feet of coax from the box to the tuner! The box uses the shield of your coax so the 16 feet or more is good. Do not be afraid of longer coax folks, this is HF and coax loss is very low. Longer coax is recommended because these antennas use the shield of the coax as a radial so to speak. Running 50, 60, 75 or 100 feet of good coax is NOT a bad thing.
I highly recommend deploying this antenna in a simple "sloper" style configuration. These boxes like to be close to ground level. It is recommended to secure the box down (via eye-bolt lug) within 5 feet of ground level and run the antenna element in a slope upwards and out from the box with the far end height recommended to be from 20-30 feet (6.6 to 10+ meters) high at the far end. You can experiment and deploy in may different fashions, zig-zag, inverted "L", vertical etc but sloper is recommended.
RADIATION PATTERN
While these are VERY omni directional, you will see that in a sloper you will get slightly more gain in the direction of the antenna element. For instance, if the antenna element is running east to west you can expect a bit more gain in the east and west.
Recent customer review (6-1-20)
Shane, ok, here is what i wanted to post:
I
have been dealing with Shane for the past month now about an antenna i
bought from him. He is, without a doubt, the BEST when it comes to
Customer Service. I needed some help about correctly connecting and
tuning the antenna and he sent VERY Fast responses and was a HUGE help. a
BIG "Thank YOU" Shane.
73, Gary KT6SKR in Oklahoma
You can Youtube Nelson Antennas or Nelson End Fed and find customer reviews.