New EndFed Antenna...

The bands have not been the best for the past week.  Lots of QRM and very deep QSB across every band I wanted to operate on.

So I decide to have a look through my junk drawer and see if I had the parts to build a new Endfed for portable use in the field...for those times I need something better than a hamstick.   I came across a small 49:1 unun, made by LnR Precision Inc.  The label on it states it's good for 10/20/40m, and it originally came with 41' wire.

Now, when I bought this, several years ago, I could never get a decent SWR with it anywhere on the bands it was advertised for.  In the end I just stripped off the wire and put the unun in my junk drawer and forgot it.  

I had a look at it again, and thought I would give it another chance.  I cut a 66' piece of wire, attached it to the unun, and added a few SOTA Beams insulators.  Up it went on my 33' mast and I put the analyzer on it.  It wasn't too bad, and after I had removed about 3' of wire  - it was just about perfect.  

I made several good solid contacts with it, and it is now usable on 40m through 6m, far more than it was supposed to have when it was new.  Best of all the SWR is 1.5:1 to 1.8:1 everywhere it will tune.

I'm glad I looked through the junk drawer now!

The finished antenna, ready to go

Map of my contacts the first time it was used.