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Reviews For: MFJ-1775W

Category: Antennas: HF: Yagi, Quad, Rotary dipole, LPDA

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Review Summary For : MFJ-1775W
Reviews: 5MSRP: $239.95
Description:
WARC band version of the 1775 for 12, 17, 30, 60 meters only.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/products.php?prodid=MFJ-1775W
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0053.6
N6YG Rating: 2015-05-24
Underrated Antenna Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I'm not sure whats happening to our hobby, maybe the old timers are right when they say the hobby is dumbing down.

Contrary to other reviewers this is an end loaded dipole and not a trapped dipole. Reviewers not knowing the difference between traps and LC loading are a perfect example of the what happens when you publish the answers to the licensing exam so people cam memorize the tests.

I'm also a bit surprised that anyone would need instructions to put this antenna together. It's nothing more than an end loaded dipole and pretty straightforward. I received mine second hand without instructions and with several broken "spokes" and still managed to have it on the air in no time.

By the way if you break or cut a "spoke" to short there's no reason to order costly replacements from MFG as their's no shortage of suitable material to make spokes from.

Harris 4043 1/8x36 Aluminum Tig welding rod works great, In fact I think that's what the original spokes are made from. For about $9 you can have enough material to replace all the spokes several times over.

Anyhow in this era of hex beam hysteria rotatable dipoles have become underrated. On air testing has confirmed that this little dipole is comparable in performance to a full size dipole with the benefit that it's very low profile, rotatable and that it can easily be installed at substantial heights using nothing more than inexpensive TV hardware.

The fact that it can be installed with TV hardware is a huge often over looked advantage. Most people don't have the luxury of 50+ foot trees to hang wires in multiple directions. I was able to mount this rotatable Dipole on a 50 foot Rohn push up mast on my roof placing the antenna at nearly 70 feet.

All I can say is that I'll take a multiband rotatable dipole at 70 feet over a Hex beam at 35 feet any day of the week. At 70 feet this simple rotatable dipole averaged 2 to 5+ S units over full sized dipoles at only 35 feet.

To be fair at times the low dipole worked as good sometimes better for close in contacts out to maybe 1000 miles or so. After that the 70 foot high rotatable dipole rocked ! For example 9K2 in Kuwait. While Kuwait was 59+ on the 70 foot high rotatable dipole he was barely audible and barely moving the needle on the 35 foot dipole, and he was only a 5X5 on a monoband Moxon at about 30 feet. By the way monoband Moxons and monoband Hex beams share nearly identical performance. Once again the height and ability to focus the pattern became a huge advantage. By the way when it comes to radiation patterns Being on the West coast means that generally front to back isn't nearly as important to me as front to side.

Once again, when it comes to DX and antenna performance there's no substitution for antenna height and this is one very easy HF antenna to get up high!

Sure its no StepIR but for less than $500 in antenna and hardware you can have an antenna at 50-70 feet which is between 15-20db less expensive than installing a 70 foot tower and a 3 element StepIR.

In closing, Don't take my word for it, If you're using wire antennas strung between trees, do yourself a favor pick up a rotatable dipole, put it on a mast as high as you can and then come back here and tell me if I was wrong.
AK4NX Rating: 2013-08-13
Disaster Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Purchased this antenna due to restrictions at my home. Followed the 'instructions' to the letter and must say they are poorly written and the numbers given for spoke length are way off! Actually, I do however believe this antenna is used as a ploy to sell their popular MFJ-259B Antenna Analyzer as this product is pitched right in the instruction book. Cutting spokes according to their numbers required me to purchase long spokes for the 10 to 40 meter bands. The spokes for 2 and 6 meter bands were cut by MFJ Antenna Shop were cut incorrectly to begin with. The old saying "cut it twice and it's still too short" holds true here! Right out of the box and too short to sart with. Calls to Tech Support were useless in getting any meaningful results and to top it off, I had to call four times to purchase a new set of spokes at my expense of course.

Had our Radio Club antenna 'experts' come over to assist, and we all became so frustrated I gave/donated the antenna to the club to be used in an up coming school project.

I do not believe anyone at MFJ ever assembled and tuned this antenna successfully before boxing it up and selling to the public.
N4UP Rating: 2012-07-30
Bad Instructions Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I assembled, used, and reviewed the MFJ-1775 ( I gave it a 5 ) before trying the WARC version of the antenna.

Firstly, all of the 1775W hardware is identical to the 1775 except for the length of the spokes and the number of 60 meter spokes ( 8 ) compared with 40 meters ( 4 ). In other words, they took an antenna designed for 40-20-15-10 meters and adapted it for 60-30-17-12 meters. The loading coils are identical. Everything is the same, except for the spokes.

Secondly, the so-called "instructions" for the 1775W were edited from the 1775 and they left a lot of the 1775 "data" in place instead of replacing with 1775W data ( when I contacted MFJ they admitted this but failed to provide any corrected data ). That means the instructions ( data ) for trimming are almost useless. The procedure is okay, but the data are mostly wrong. SO --- be very careful trimming and don't assume any of the data ( starting resonant frequency, trimming lengths, bandwidths ) in the instructions is correct.

Thirdly, I could not get this antenna to work on 60 meters, and it barely works on 30 meters. On the other hand, it works very well on 17 and 12 meters.

As others have mentioned, the trimming process is tedious and is better done slowly and evenly, in small ( 1/4" ) chunks, using an analyzer after every cut ( MFJ-259 works well ). Fortunately, I was able to do the trimming with the antenna in its final location, and with the analyzer connected at the station end of the feed-line, so I could see the "actual" resonant frequencies and SWR. If you are not able to trim in-place, then you can expect the results to differ from what you get during trimming.

Now I am not an expert in antennas, but it seems to me that if you have loading coils for 40-20-15-10 meters and spokes for 60-30-17-12 meters then it will not work as well as if it had coils for 60-30-17-12 meters. Indeed, after trimming both the 1775 and 1775W antennas, I have much lower SWR on all the 1775 bands than I do the 1775W bands.

Also note that the bandwidth is very narrow on 60 meters, so you get to choose which frequency to work or have a much wider-range antenna tuner than I have.

Lastly, I give this a four because it is simply not as efficient as the 1775 and doesn't work on 60 meters ). I don't care as much about 60 and 30 as I do 17 and 12 meters. For someone like me with HOA restrictions the 1775 and 1775W are a good compromise, but they will never perform as well as multi-element yagis.
WA0OFO Rating: 2011-05-09
modified Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought the 1775w for 17 & 12
I modified the 60m to 40
and the 30m to 20m
just used the cutting instructions from a regular 1775.
a LOT of trimming!
you MUST have an antenna analizer like the mfj 259 or you will go nuts! beg buy or borrow one!
works VERY well! and nice to have a rotatable diapole on 40!
NN6AA Rating: 2009-03-08
receive well, hard to tune, bad instructions Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
i dont think the people at mfj have ever put one of these antenna's together....... their cutting instructions for the spokes are way off base.....
one must add lots of inches to the 60 meter coil spokes for it to res' on 60... no cutting here....
the rest of the bands ie 12,17,30 meters all required cutting of the spokes. which is good for its easier to cut then add to the spokes..... still not able to get a good swr on the 60 meter band..like 2.4:1 the lowest i could get..... the rest of the bands anywhere from 1.4:1 to 2.4:1
still not the best swr but ok with a tuner..
the antenna receive's well....... putting the antenna together is kind of a pain in the butt..
but ok........ i would recommand the antenna to my friends and all.......its just not plug and play.............mfj does give u lots of extra spoke to use.... a plus......