Thank you for choosing to download the Ham Radio two point zero audio podcast rip.
This is the audio taken out of a video or a livestream I did
recently. You can catch all my videos on YouTube Ham Radio two point zero
and catch us live every Sunday night at seven pm Central Standard Time for a
different topic each week. Thank you for the support, and thank you for
being a member of the community. What is the best Ham Radio antenna for
HF on Amazon? I'm gonna give you my top eight picks today. Let
you decide what you want, different variances, different this, that, and
the other. So let's go two years ago. I did a video on
Amazon about the top seven antennas, and I got a comment just like a
month or two ago that a couple of the links were broken. Amazon does
this thing where they're not they have product this month and then not next month,
and you've probably seen the dreaded currently unavailable. We don't know when or
if this product will be back in stock, that kind of thing. So
I decided to do a follow up video to tell you what the top pick
eights were for today, which is a beginning of twenty twenty four, so
we'll see how long these links last, I am going to start in order
of price. We're going to start at the lowest price and we're going to
go to the highest price. And there's different variances on all of these antennas.
So if you are a kit builder, these K six aark intennas are
great. In fact, the first three are Adam K six aark intenna is.
Now you can go to K six aark dot com and find links to
all of his kids and they're just and there's buy on Amazon links at the
bottom of all his kids and they're all sold through Amazon because he gets this
big batch and he sends them all to Amazon. Then he links from him
from his website that people can more readily and easily find them, So check
that link in the description. Blow. But he's got a five watt matching
unit for BNC Mail. There's a BNC female option as well. He's currently
sold out of that at the time of this recording. There's a twenty wat
mapit B and CE female and male, the female ones being displayed here today.
And then the one I like best is the one hundred watt infed halfwave
and it is a SO two thirty nine connector for the antenna on that unit.
So these are all in fed half wave kits. They are forty nine
to one matching units, so that you add wire two each actually after you
build it again. These are kits that you will build if you don't want
to build an antenna, then we'll talk about a few other things today.
But these first three are kids that you build, and they're fairly simple to
build. I've built two of them, and if I can do it,
most of you guys can probably do it as well. So this five watt
matching unit and this twenty watt matching unit depending on what radio you're using.
If you're really big into QRP, you've got one of these pocket sized radios,
one of these mountaintopper type radios or the True SDX or something, the
five wat's going to be plenty for you. The twenty watt matching unit will
be great for like a KX two or a KX three or the G ninety,
which is twenty watt's maximum on single sideband. You can also do multiple
builds on all of these. It says right here it can be built.
It is a forty nine to one on which is an unbalanced to unbalance which
is what your infed halfwave antennas typically are. You can add like sixty five
to sixty feet worth of wire and have it resonant on four bands ten,
fifteen, twenty, and forty. You can add one hundred and thirty feet
uh worth of wire and add I think thirty and eighty maybe seventeen thirty and
eighty something like that, different variances on the infed halfwave. There. You
can also build it as a nine to one on, which is commonly a
random wire, so you can put a certain amount somewhere around, like eighty
four eighty five feet if I'm not mistaken. You put a certain amount of
wire on it and then use the tuner in your radio and tune it to
almost any band you want to. Or it can be used as a four
to one if you want to do something four to one or an or a
one to one one to one balance which is a balance to unbalanced, and
then four to one on which is unbalanced to unbalanced, and those can be
used for off center fed or a center fed dipole type configuration. So if
you guys want to know more about different antenna configurations, I've got a couple
of videos on this channel about that. I'll try to link those below,
but maybe we'll do a live stream about that and talk about that sometime again
in the future. So the difference between these three ten antennas is that this
one's a five wat maximum, this one is a twenty wat maximum, and
this one is a one hundred WAT maximum. So these are basically the same
three antennas except for power. These first two, the five wat and the
twenty watt say that you can do them for the forty nine to one,
the nine to one to forty one, or the one to one. This
last one ten the hundred watt, the one that I like the best myself,
says it will do forty nine to one for an INFED halfwave or nine
to one for an un on. He doesn't list the other two on here.
I'll have to confirm with him on that. I think you could probably
do that on this one, but I could be wrong about about that.
Depends on how you whine the toroid when you're building the kit, that's what
it's all about. But this one right here, INFED halfway is a fantastic
antenna to take out into the field, to put in a pack, to
take somewhere, parks on the air, summits on the air, islands on
the air, something like that. If you're going to pack up an antenna
and want it to be lightweight and portable and infed, halfwave is a fantastic
option for that. So these first three fit the first three and are eight
antennas on Amazon today, And really the only difference between them is how much
power do you want to run? I personally like one hundred watts, So
the one hundred wat version is the one that I usually choose. Number four
today is a Radio Waves DX forty off center fed diepole. Now. Radio
Waves is a US company. You will see them at Hamvenchon and Ham Cash.
They make antennas for all kinds of stuff, a lot of achiaf antenna's.
They make some hex beams, they make some vertical dipoles, They make
some off center fed diepoles and center fed diepoles. This one here will work
on six' ten twenty and forty meters. Again, the difference is how
this centerpiece often called an un un unbalanced to unbalanced matching unit or a balance
a balance to unbalanced matching unit. It depends on how that is configured.
Inside how that is built, as to what bands you get, as to
how much wire you use, as to how much power you can use,
and all that kind of good stuff. So this one right here is rated
for up to fifteen hundred watts on single sideband according to this right here.
So this has got some BFY toroids and BFY equipment that's built into the center
fed piece. So that's going to work really well for those of you guys
who want to run maybe one hundred wats on FT eight or a couple hundred
wats on FT eight, or maybe you've got a four or five hundred wide
amplifier you want to run, This is going to be an excellent option for
that. Most of their stuff is made in the USA. They do have
USA support. You can contact them via email or phone inside of the USA,
and at only ninety seven dollars, this one's readily available and it'll work
great for those of you want to go out and put something up at your
home and leave it, or take something that's maybe a little bit bigger than
an NFF half wave but not extremely large and bulky, something that still compacts
down pretty well to take out into the field. Right here, real quick,
we're talking about the top eight antennas, and I want to talk to
you about the sponsor of this video. Who is Sessi the SESI store.
You can visit the SESI store right here. If you guys have watched some
of my most recent videos measuring harmonics on different radios with the tiny Essa,
Cesse sent me this tiny Essa. I already had one from RNL, but
Sese sent me the Ultra one, which is a larger screen a couple more
features than that. So they are sponsoring this video. Check the links in
the description. Blow if you guys check them out, sure to put in
your order that you heard about them on Ham Radio two point zero. But
they have nanovna's, they have tiny essays. They have these measuring units that
you can use to measure and tune your intenna, or measure and cut your
antenna so that is tuned for a more resonant type capability. It's part of
the whole antenna building process. So if you're interested in that, check out
SEZ in the link below, and thank you for sponsoring this video. The
fifth one we're going to talk about today is the wind Camp Gypsy five to
fifty Mega hurts horizontal dipole. Horizontal just means you you can kind of hang
it that way, or you can hang it as an inverted V, perhaps
an inverted L something like that. This is made by a company called wind
Camp. You see them often on Amazon. They've got a lot of stuff
on Amazon. They've got some ascessories for the IC seven oh five and that
kind of thing. This one comes at a one hundred wats pep, so
it's not as quite as powerful as the radio waves we just talked about,
and it's more expensive than the radio waves we just talked about. Honestly,
the radio waves is probably a better intenna build quality wise, but you know
some you know this one has it a five percent off coupon. This one
does have. You can see right there at the top where those red knobs
are. Those are a binding post or a screw down posts with thumb screws
on top of them, which that means that you can take off the elements
and change the size of them. So if you want to do some extra
antenna tuning, you want to add something to the antenna, you want to
make it shorter, you want to make it smaller, you want to make
it longer, so it works more bands. You can easily change out the
elements on this antenna so that it's a little bit more customizable for your needs,
depending on how you how you want it. There. They do have
a five percent of coupon right now at the time of this recording, so
be sure to check the prices for all that. It'll go all the way
up to fifty mega hurts which is six meters, from five to fifty mega
hurts five megga hurts is sixty meters, so it'll cover a few more bands
than the ones that we talked about before that'll only cover forty band up to
forty meters. This will cover well up to six sixties. The next one
above forty, so it'll cover one more band. If you say right here,
it says it'll work fifty megaherts, twenty eight megaherts, which is six
meters, ten meters, twelve fifteen meters, seventeen meters, twenty meters,
thirty meters, forty meters, and sixty meters right there, so it'll you
can unwind and wind the links of wire out to whatever length you want.
It tells you exactly right there how much wire to wind out, so you
can tune the INTENDA to different bands and use it in different operation styles like
that. Shark Intennas is another company. Most of their stuff's made in the
USA. I got some of their hamsticks a while back. Hamsticks are great
because they're very versatile. You can set up a hamstick and hang them horizontally.
You can put one here and when they're and have like a rotatable type
diepole. You can put a hamstick on a mag mount on your vehicle.
I've done several Poda activations with hamsticks on my vehicle that you can go out
to a park and sit in your truck and activate the parks on the air.
So that's totally acceptable thing to do. Parks on the air from your
vehicle is totally acceptable. And hamsticks are great because they're generally mono band.
You have a ten meter, a fifteen meter, a twenty meter hamstick,
seventeen meter hamstick. You can do stuff like that, and you can change
bands. You have to get out of the truck and unscrew the one,
and they have quick disconnects you can get in some of them. But Shark
Intenna's makes all their stuff in the USA. Great company. I've traded some
emails with them in the past. Gigaparts carries the carries it full variety of
Shark Antenna Shark hamsticks. So in fact, right there, Radio Antenna is
by Gigaparts, So this is gigaparts is at on Amazon, so there you
go, there you go. Gigaparts is the one selling these. These are
great if because they're really versatile. You can run them vertical, you can
run them horizontal, you can put them on your vehicle and be on HF
while you're on road trips. So Shark Antenna's is definitely on the list today.
The next one is the Chameleon. Now chameleon stuff I've seen chamellions also
made in the USA. They have a factory in California. This is the
MCom three portable. They may have more items on Amazon, but they're kind
of like hit or miss what they have, probably depending on what they have
in stock at the time. So you can click on the Chameleon store here
you can see a lot of other stuff that they have out here, Chamelion
ten of here, and then it gets into other stuff down there. It
kind of doesn't. It doesn't. It's it says it's their store, but
it's not, it's just doing a search for chamelion antenna. So the MCom
three portable is a very lightweight, very well made wire antenna. It is
a seventy three foot of copper clad kevlar wire and twenty five foot a cop
upper clag peval wire on either side, so there's seventy three feet on one
side, there's twenty five feet on the other side. You can use this
for multiple bands. This is what's called an off center fed dipole because the
matching unit, the black part right here where you feed the antenna, is
not perfectly in the center of the two wires. If the two wires were
the same length, this would be a center fed dipole, since the two
wires are different links, putting this not in the center of the two wires.
If you think about the two wires put together as one wire, and
you put this somewhere in the middle of one wire, and if it's in
the center of the center fed and if the wire's different links on both sides,
in it's off center fed. That's the easiest way I know how to
explain it. So this is an off center fed diepole, which typically means
that it will work more bands. Center fed dipoles are usually for one band.
You have a forty meter center fed diepole, you have a twenty meter
center fed diepole. There are some exceptions to that, but generally speaking,
that's how it works. The off center fed diepole usually gives you more band
options, so you might be able to work three, four, five,
six bands from one center fed diepole and have it be either tunable or resonant
on specific bands. Once again, Chameleon antenna is made in the USA,
just like Shark antennas, just like radio waves, So a lot of these
things are made in the USA, so you're supporting US companies when you guys
check this out. One hundred and eighty dollars for the MCom three portable,
very lightweight, great working antenna. The last one we're going to talk about
today, and this is just the last one because the most expensive this is
the superintenna. Now, this one comes with all the stuff you see in
the pack right here, comes with multiple ways to mount it with the tripod.
There on the bottom, it comes with multiple ways to mount it with
the tripod. There you can see the antenna sitting on the tripod. Right
there you can see the spike on the left over there, so you can
stick it into the ground rather than having the tripod sit on the ground.
If it's windy outside, then the tripod might be blown over. It comes
with this neat carrying bag and whatnot. This piece in the middle right here
with the black coils is where you tune the antenna, So you can move
the whip on the top up and down, and you can tune the antenna
with the matching coils in here. And this makes the intuna usable on multiple
bands. Now I don't own one of these antenna's, but one of our
club members brought this intenna to field day a couple of years ago and we
used it at field day, and for as small in compact and lightway as
it is, I thought it worked pretty well. Yeah. I got to
use it myself for a couple hours one afternoon on field day. I think
we were on forty meters with it, if I remember it correctly. I
can't recall we might have been on We might have been on twenty meters with
it. I can't remember. We're usually on twenty meters with the hex's beam
at field day, so I'm thinking this one we were on forty meters with
or he might have even set it up for six meters. But the great
thing about this antenna is it is versatile. You can set it up for
multiple bands. It's a multi band Intenda that compacts down into that little bag
right there. It is easy to carry around. You can see all the
stuff on it right here and read all the kind of things. Enjoy the
freedom of all bands eighty forty thirty twenty seventeen fifteen ten meters twelve meters ten
meters and covers all frequencies throughout the band, depending on where you tune the
coil to. So the Superintenda MP one DXTR eighty HF super Whip Tripod all
banded eighty meter MP one intenna's a that's a name. That's a name right
there. Well, there it is. But that's the last one we're going
to talk about today. So guys, that's the top eight antennas on Amazon
today in early twenty twenty four that I would choose. What else might you
add to the list? Did I miss something? I did look around and
see because there were two or three intendas that I wanted to include today and
they're showing out of stock. On Amazon right now. So again, Amazon's
very kind of hit or miss. Sometimes they have stock, sometimes they don't,
Sometimes they get it back in. Sometimes you won't see it for a
long long time. Adam's intens we're out of stock for a long long time.
But I know that Adam has updated his stock and added a lot of
stuff to Amazon, which is one reason I wanted to make this video today.
So what else would you put in this list? Put a comment in
the video below. Seventy three