Interesting Discovery

[WA2WMR]

Most of my Field Days I used an Elecraft K1 on 40, 20 and 15 meters. The antenna I used was an end fed wire with the length selected from the chart found at  https://udel.edu/~mm/ham/randomWire/. I selected 72ft for the wire length so that it would work also be able to work 80 meters if I ever got an 80 meter radio. Eventually I got a Yaesu 817 for 80 meters, but couldn't get the antenna to work on 80. This year, a week before FD, I went out and set up my antenna in the same configuration I would use for FD and tried again. Still no luck. But I had a 100 ft length of wire and, figuring on cutting it back until it would resonate on all four bands, I set up the antenna using that with the far end looped around a branch and just wrapped the wire around itself. To my surprise, it work very nicely on all four bands. That is what I used on FD. I only made two contacts on 80 meters but that is because I chose not to fight the QRM that resulted from a 1.2khz bandwidth on CW. (And the 817 is current hog). But a quick look at the chart shows that 100 ft should not work on any of the four bands. (although 101 should work on all four)

[K3MRI]

Okay, first of all... interesting. Secondly, time for some math. I can't right now, but I'm going to come back to this post, reread it six times, do the math, and see what I can glean... Quick question: did you run an analyzer at all? 

[WA2WMR]

What's a analyzer? 🙂

More seriously, this is a "get something up in a hurry and make it work" antenna.

[K3MRI]

I meant an SWR meter. Just wondering if once you had it up you measured it? If you don't have one and you ever need to borrow...

[WA2WMR]

SWR I do have, but didn't use it. Actually, I just realized that I have a cheap MFJ (Mighty Fine Junk?) antenna analyzer on which I put my thumb through the meter. Glued the meter back but it doesn't seem to work in the range that covers 80m.