Guess I missed that in your post, sorry. Any conductor of any length will radiate, resonant or not ... provided you can get your TX to feed power into it. In all cases, the far end of the conductor is an open circuit [High E, low I, High Z] The impedance at the feed end will be a complex number. If the conductor is resonant, the reactance will be zero. If it is not resonant, it will be non-zero and either inductive or capacitive, and one more component your ATU has to deal with. Elecraft ATU's [even the simplest KX1] can deal with a fairly wide range of complex impedances ... with a 9:1 transformer, you should be OK.

Yes, the outside surface of the coax shield will act as a counterpoise. Even without coax [direct feed], the radio chassis, headphone cable, battery, and you will usually suffice although hanging a few feet of wire off your lap from the shield of the BNC may help.

If you do use coax, and you really think you need a common mode choke, put it at the rig, not the transformer. Otherwise you don't have much counterpoise. [:-)

Hope this is closer to answering your questions

73,

Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County


On 2/8/2017 4:14 PM, Dan Presley wrote:
Thanks for the replies so far. Just to clarify-I plan to use the built in auto 
tuners in my KX2 and 3, so hopefully they can handle the job. I already have a 
good 9:1 transformer which should work. The primary question is the advantage 
to the EFHW as opposed to a true random length (not a halfwave at desired freq) 
with a counterpoise. It sounds like the high current point is a quarter wave 
from the feedpoint which could be an advantage from the random length. I’ve 
also seen a variety of ideas on the proper length of coax to use with an EFHW, 
which as I understand will act as a counterpoise. I now have one of the nice 
lightweight SOTA poles which would be good with whatever wire I go with. 
Waiting for some decent weather in the Pacific NW  :))


Dan Presley  N7CQR
[email protected]


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