End-fed wire and 1/4 wave vertical shoot-out

A long time ago, when I started out in ham radio, I bought an EARCHI end-fed wire antenna. It was very cheap and very simple but, with a ~10m wire attached and run up a 10m fishing pole, it gave me access to 40m for the first time. I still remember well a nice QSO with someone on a boat in mid-Atlantic on 40m with it. 

But, over time, I moved on to delta loops, though I never did have an especially good antenna for 40m after that.

The joys of operating radio in a field full of young cows!

 

Anyhow, someone mentioned end-fed wires on Mastodon recently, so I thought I might get the EARCHI wire out again this evening and briefly run it on 200mW WSPR against a 14MHz monoband 1/4 wave vertical for that band.

The antennas were placed about 1.5 wavelength apart on wet agricultural soil (the water's essentially at the surface), though I suppose more spacing might have been better; I have young cattle in the field at the moment, so one has to be ready to single-handedly defend a small, not a large area if they get too boisterous!

The 8.45m end-fed wire (the length I already had attached to it a long time ago) was matched-up with a very simple QRP matchbox, achieving 1.1:1. The 1/4 wave has pretty much the same SWR, though of course without a matchbox.

How did they compare?  Turns out, pretty well - especially considering that the end fed wire can be multibanded with a suitable matchbox. Whilst the 1/4 wave achieved a marginally better geographical reach, the difference wasn't very large. Curiously, the 1/4 wave reached a number of far-eastern stations at up to about 9dB above the detection limit, whereas the end-fed didn't get there at all. That was probably down to differences in elevation pattern.

Here's the plot of where the signals got to. MW6PYS is the end-fed wire, MW1CFN the 1/4 wave vertical monobander:

Next, the distances achieved:

The simultaneous spots across all received distances; only a 1dB difference in favour of the 1/4 wave vertical:

Out at DX distances, beyond 5400km, the difference is still pretty small at only 1.7dB. But remember, out in the far east, the end-fed failed to get there at all, so there are no comparisons to be made in those cases.

The end-fed wire, as I have it arranged, will fit onto a 9m fishing pole whilst keeping somewhat above ground. The advantage of a 9m pole is that it fits into a plastic clothes line screw, whereas a 10m pole doesn't (unless you cut the bottom plastic end cap collar off, which is often difficult to do without damaging the pole). 9m poles are also curiously far less wind-prone than a 10m pole (try it; you'll see what I mean!)

I will be trying the end-fed wire on 22nd April, when I'll be operating at Marconi's Carnarvon VLF station of old, as GB1GLC (details here). It will be much easier to match one wire for different bands than carry a load of monoband wires and have to remove and fix them to poles all day long!

Leave me alone!