I completely endorse these antennas and over the years have made about 20 copies of the half wave resonant end fed from the 100w range to about a kW. They are problem solvers where the coax does not end up in the middle of the yard and it only needs two tie points to hang it.
They radiate basically the same as a center fed dipole of the same size and should not need a tuner within their resonant range. This type of antenna resonates as half wavelength at the lowest design frequency, then at multiples of a half wave on even harmonics.
However the 80-10m version resonates at the very low end of 80m near 3.6Mhz because its tuned for around 7.15MHz, 14.3Mhz, 28.6MHz, etc, and for those to work you have to give up resonance in the voice portion of 75m in the favored 3.8 to 4Mhz range where you will need a tuner.
Another recommendation is to use a very effective choke balun near the antenna because if you get away from the resonant points of these antennas they will light up the coax with some RF. It turns out MyAntenns makes the most effective choke baluns I have seen and their CMC-130S-3K or CMC-330-5K baluns would be a good choice for the 80-10m antenna unless you want to spring for their most effective CMC-130-3K at additional cost.
On my home made 80-10m versions I get around the 3.6MHz sweet spot problem by using a 40m trap at the 40m resonant spot about 63ft down the wire from the matching transformer, then custom tune the 80m leg for 3.9Mhz which covers the 3.8 to 4.0Mhz phone portion of the band just fine. You can do the same with the commercial versions, just buy the transformer only from MyAntennas, or set the supplied wire aside and experiment with your own wire and 40m trap.
These are NOT to be confused with the popular but crappy 9:1 or 6:1 end fed types which radiate noticeably worse and have lots of hot coax problems. Some worse performing brands that come to mind are Maple Leaf, Chameleon, Alpha Antenna, Ultimax, HF EDS, EARCHI and many others, especially off Ebay.
Danny Horvat who owns MyAntennas is one of the more savvy engineers in the business and used to work for Cushcraft where he designed the R8, R6000 and others. Everything I have bought from him in the past has been first class in quality and workmanship and I use his 80-10m offset center fed dipole as my main HF antenna.
prcguy
I've been giving serious consideration to buying one of these
https://myantennas.com/wp/product/efhw-8010/
It would solve some serious installation problems that I'll be running into running a 1/4 wave dipole.
It says no tuner necessary, but I'll likely be using a tuner anyway. What would be the opinion of the guru's here? Has anyone had experience with these, good or bad?
Thanks!
