Par End-Fedz poor performance

[lewg26]

I recently bought a Par SWL End-Fedz antenna to use with my IC-R75 and I am very disappointed with the performance. I have the antenna mounted horizontally about 25 feet off the ground. It is running from a window and the other end is tied to a tree branch then it is running to the radio with 20' of RG6. I am getting better reception on all bands with 45' of wire I have up around the inside perimitter of my listening room. With the End-Fedz antenna I can't even pick up any of the WWV stations. All the reviews I have read for this antenna are great so I don't understand why I am having so much trouble. Is there something I am doing wrong or something else I need to do to make this antenna work better? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

 

[StaticLine]

Man,I hate to hear that.I wish I had an answer.My set up is the same as yours and no problems.Every once in a while I forget to use the selector for the right antenna though.Maybe rare but could be a bad wire?My run is 100' of Groves RG8 and in this hole I live in seems it picks up plenty to occupy my feeble new guy listening habits.I'm sure you hooked up to the right place on the end box.I was kind of confused with which to use at first for the ground vs the antenna side of the transfomer.The two real close are the sheild and ground and the one on the end is the antenna side.I finally read the destructions.Hope you can get it going.John

 

[k9rzz]

Make sure that you actually have a problem and not just experiencing bad propagation. I usually don't hear WWV on 15mhz at all these days here in Wisconsin. 10mhz WWV is best in the mornings here, otherwise lousy. Swap the antennas quickly for comparisons.

Not much can go wrong with that antenna. If you're sure there's a problem, there's not much you can do but take it down and check it out, part by part.

 

[ka3jjz]

Yeah, propagation right now plain sucks, big time. If you've gone through everything shoot an email to Dale at Par. He's well known for being very responsive to customer's questions - in fact, he's one of the very few (the other is Dave at DPD Productions...) that takes the time to do this. 73 Mike

 

[fineshot1]

I recently bought a Par SWL End-Fedz antenna to use with my IC-R75 and I am very disappointed with the performance. I have the antenna mounted horizontally about 25 feet off the ground. It is running from a window and the other end is tied to a tree branch then it is running to the radio with 20' of RG6. I am getting better reception on all bands with 45' of wire I have up around the inside perimitter of my listening room. With the End-Fedz antenna I can't even pick up any of the WWV stations. All the reviews I have read for this antenna are great so I don't understand why I am having so much trouble. Is there something I am doing wrong or something else I need to do to make this antenna work better? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

I am certainly no expert but perhaps the RG6 75ohm cable is causing a severe enough mismatch on a 50ohm design. StaticLine is using RG8 50ohm cable and has no problem.

 

[KC1UA]

I've been feeding mine with 75 ohm RG6 from day one, and it's performed superbly. Mine is sloped from the top of a tower to a backyard shed. Performance with my R75 has been excellent.

 

[zguy1243]

How do the noise levels compare between the outdoor antenna and the indoor?

 

[StaticLine]

I only tried mine the day before the pars went up.Indoors for me sucked big time.Appliances and indoor emfs made listening really bad.The 75 is so much more sensitve than my little DX-399 from rat shack.Outdoors with the pars is great.Still have to use the NB for when the wife runs the dishwasher or microwave.The NB filters that all out.

 

[lewg26]

Thanks for all the replies so far. I was hoping there was something obvious that I was missing or doing wrong, even though I was pretty sure that wasn't the case. I really can't figure out what is wrong here. Everything looks fine with the antenna, but when I switch from the indoor antenna to the outdoor antenna the noise level drops but so does the signal level. With the indoor antenna I can pick up WWV stations on 10 and 15 Mhz during the day but I get nothing with the PAR antenna. I can still pick up the strong stations but they are a lot weaker. Even AM broadcast stations are a lot weaker with the PAR antenna. I will try moving the antenna from the back of my house to the front today and see if that makes a difference. Thanks again for the help.

 

[ka3jjz]

As I mentioned before, call or email Dale at PAR. He's extremely helpful, and has built quite a reputation on this very fact. I wouldn't doubt that some of the EHam reviews on his other antennas mentions this as well

73 Mike

[edit] In fact, they do....

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/3707

A couple of easy questions - Did you change the connections at the transformer (there are a couple of different combinations)? Ground it (no you may not have to, but every situation requires a bit of change here and there- and the EHam reviews mention this frequently)? Did you check the coax to insure it wasn't shorted out or otherwise bad?

 

[kb2vxa]

Just to clear up a misunderstanding, unless the antenna is resonant and the feed point matched there just ain't no such thing as ohms. Since you're listening on a wide range of frequencies without a matchbox tuner between the wire and coax it'll never see 50, 75 or any predictable impedance so don't worry about it.

If you connected everything as per instructions it should work unless there is a bad component or connection or you made some sort of error. Like the man said propagation sucks on the bands below 20M at this point in the solar cycle but they can open sporadically and unexpectedly.

Just so you don't get confused, the meter is the measurement of (wave)length so as the frequency goes up the meters go down.