Hello operators. Many of you know I often use the Super Antenna MP1 for times when I don’t want to carry an external antenna tuner. The MP1 is basically a shortened quarter wave vertical. It’s got a loading coil to help reduce the overall length of the antenna. The shortened quarter wave vertical, in practice, becomes much easier to deploy.
There is something you probably didn’t know, or didn’t think about. That is, there is a way to make the shortened quarter wave vertical, a nearly lossless configuration. I first talked about this antenna configuration in the summer of 2019, during a deployment of the solar powered Field Station This deployment was man portable, from my electric fat bike, and Nortent tipi 4.
The trick to setting up the MP1 in a near lossless configuration is using a longer whip. The longer the whip we use for the MP1 (or any coil antenna), the lower the loading we require. In layman terms that means we need fewer turns of the coil, when using a longer whip. Fewer turns of the coil means better performance. I found the Chameleon MIL Whip 2.0, to be a perfect addition, to the Super Antenna MP1. You can also add 2-3 ER1 extension rods above the super slider, then top that off with a TM1 titanium whip.
My normal configuration is the chameleon MIL WHIP 2.0, on top of the MP1 super slider. Then two ER1 extension rods underneath the MP1.
The cost of having a more efficient antenna system is having fewer bands, and a frequency guide which is no longer calibrated to the super slider. That’s not really a bad thing, we just have to tune the antenna manually. If you’re running more than 100 watts (blasphemy), you’ll probably want a whip which can handle your desired power output.
Please give this a try and let me know what you think. If you share it on social media, tag me @oh8stn, so I can find it. That’s it, let me know what you think.
73, Julian oh8stn
Is the 80m coil still needed for 80m, or is that possible without extra coil in this setup ? Would rather buy a basic mp-1 kit without the 60 and 80m addon and add a chameleon whip then.
That a good question but honestly i’m not sure . We can add this to my list of tests to make.