Tag: Moxon

Got the 10m Moxon up in the air on my PVC mast. Using both 10 foot sections of the mast proved to be a little too cumbersome for just myself to handle, so settled for using one 10 foot section and propped it up against a ladder for support. This gets the Moxon 4.15m (13.6 feet) up in the air. Not quite as high as I wanted, but for testing purposes, it will do.

Fiddled with the antenna element lengths and was able to get the SWR as low as 2.5-2.6 across the band, which is pretty close to the limit of what the tuner in the radio will match. Should be able to get it lower but I’m sure the ladder is messing things up some.

In any case, the antenna is up in the air and connected to the radio. Receive seems to be working pretty well. Loud stations come in louder, and the fainter stations come in just a little bit louder. I could definitely see a difference switching between the Moxon and the dipole while watching some 10m PSK.

Haven’t tried transmitting on the antenna yet. I’d like to see if I can get it a little higher and tune it so that the SWR a little lower.

Working with the shortened version of the mast seemed to work out pretty well, so I think as a platform for antenna experiments, it will do nicely.

Now to work on getting the antenna up higher and installed more permanently.

After a few hours of reading instructions, screwing and clamping things into place, then undoing it all and redoing it properly because I didn’t read the instructions thoroughly enough, I got the 10m Moxon antenna assembled. The bent tubes were easy enough to straighten out, and the one tube that had 2cm broken off was still long enough to work with. I managed to lose a hose clamp somewhere along the way, but fortunately I was able to find another one that worked in one of my toolboxes. Ended up with a bunch of extra lock washers too that didn’t seem to be in the parts list in the manual.

Here’s the feed point, which I’ll probably zip tie (or some other tie) onto the beam.

It’s a pretty big antenna, at right around 3.97m (12.4 feet) long. Here it is up against the car for some scale.

Now to figure out how I’m going to get it up into the air…

Thanks to the amateurradio subreddit and K5WL and, I now have a 10m Moxon antenna (MFJ-1890).

According to K5WL, the antenna got blown down and sustained some damage, but nothing too severe from what I can see. A few of the aluminum tubes are bent a little bit, and one has about 2cm broken off. I think it should be easy enough to straighten the bent tubes and I could probably find a replacement for the shortened tube. If I have to, I’ll see if MFJ will sell me some replacement parts.

Very excited to get working on this and get it on the air.