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Reviews For: MFJ-1798 80m - 2m Vertical

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : MFJ-1798 80m - 2m Vertical
Reviews: 27MSRP: 289.95
Description:
Full size performance . . . No ground or radials . . . Operate 10 bands: 75/80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, 6 and 2 Meters with one antenna . . . Separate full size radiators . . . End loading . . . Elevated top feed . . . Low Radiation Angle . . . Very wide bandwidth . . . Highest performance no ground vertical ever . .
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/products.php?prodid=MFJ-1798
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00273.6
K7LFY Rating: 2019-07-31
It is a great antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought the first 1798 20 years ago or more. I had no particular expectations - I was just wanting to have an antenna that would work after setup from 80 CW through 10 meters. I was tired of a dozen dipoles and verticals all over the lot with a dozen RG-8 coax cables and all that assorted expensive crap. With one 60 foot vertical and 60 150' radials and with the 1798 I was set for 160-2 meters with a good antenna on 160 and 80 as well - - - although the 1798 held its own on both 160 and 80 with a home brew tuner on 160. This was in Oklahoma...boiling hot, humid, windy, ice storms, BIG TORNADOES, etc. I used it for 10 year there. I moved it once 50 miles north to my cabin and used it another 5 years - no big repairs ever. I worked DXCC on 160, 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 Meters. All in all over 2000 countries across the HF bands. WAZs on 8(33Z on 160) bands....so what is the big bitch here? After 25 years and another move I am rebuilding the antenna. A new drive balun setup and so on. Yes the fiberglass X's and the top plate de-laminated after 20 years...wow. I lost the top hat once in an ice storm - so? All my dipoles were on the ground as was every beam I saw in Oklahoma City. The balun and drive coax finally failed after 20 years - ooooohhh. Folks this is a narrow band antenna for 80 - yes - but it is perfect for FT8 and with a simple cheap home brew tuner you get 160 through 2 in one small easily set up package and it will handle some power if you ant it to. I ran 1500 W to it on some bands. READ THE BOOK! bought a second one when I saw they were stopping production and gave it to my son...K7SCX in CO. He used it the same way - 160 through 2 meters. He has DXCCs on 160-10 with it AS WELL. Now he has a nice set of beams from 40 through 10 so the 1798 is not used much but I can and do tell everyone it is a great idea and one heck of an antenna. I put mine at 10 feet above the ground on a 1 1/4" piece of pipe in concrete and it never twitched an inch in decades. My son had to invest $50,000+ in three towers and educated aluminum tubing to beat it (A $1000 ANTENNA SYSTEM!)soundly and with all that tubing at 100-150' it takes a lot of bucks to maintain that stuff yearly. If you have a death wish you try to do it yourself - read the SK reports in QST and CQ if you doubt that. So you hire a pro or take your chance with amateur tools and gear. No Thanks. The 1798 can be built and installed well by one guy with a good ladder, a post hole digger, a shovel and a couple bags of concrete plus a few ordinary hand tools. EASY and very safe. I have had no support issues from MFJ ET.AL. They were helpful, friendly fast and nice. Maybe lucky there. So I have two.....they are great antennas and I will have my old stand-by up by the fall again and on FT-8 etc. with virtually no issues and ONE measly coax . . .so I can afford some nice LMR to it instead of crummy old lossy RG to a dozen verticals and dipoles and......I love this antenna! The designer was a genius.
KM9U Rating: 2014-07-03
Some aluminum good for scrap. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The only good thing I can say about this antenna is, if you carefully separate the aluminum from the other metal pieces, you can sell it for a couple bucks worth of scrap.
AG8AR Rating: 2013-09-28
Bad News Bear Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'm not sure where to begin. I totally agree with a lot of reviews; poor instructions,etc. I tuned the darn thing at 5-6 feet off the ground as per instructions.Then raised it up 20+feet and it was WAY-OUT of wack. I settled for a 10feet elevation. Not a happy camper. Mighty Fine Junk could be right-on. Thank goodness for ant. tuners !!!!
N7CPU Rating: 2012-08-03
1 year followup Time Owned: more than 12 months.
after a year in the arizona sun, I thought I would write a followup.

all the bands shifted their resonant point down almost a full megahertz. talked to Tom at MFJs antenna shop (hy-gain) and he is great. He pushed a warrantee order though for a new feed harness and pcb, stated 1 to 2 weeks to ship, never shipped for 4 weeks...and he was dead on with the problem.

After pulling the old feed harness off, I noticed discoloration on the translucent coax jacket near both ground taps on it. Both spots had water ingress and corrosion was pretty excessive (did I mention I live in the desert and it hardly ever rains) the heatshrink they use isn't tight enough on the coax to seal it....no more wiretie, no more heatshrink. most of a roll of electrical tape seals it up and will outlast wireties

the new harness isn't even rg-58. it is smaller in diameter and unmarked (in between rg58 and rg174) I'm sure there is quite a bit of loss on it on 15,12,10 and 2 meters.

every wiretie they shipped with it was laying on the ground having been destroyed by the sun. They didn't even ship UV protected wireties with this. All the fiberglass insulators and the balun form (pvc water pipe) has all discolored and showing UV damage. Best thing you can do with this is to clear coat EVERY piece of fiberglass and plastic before you put it up and tape the ground taps on the coax WELL, as well as GUYLINE this thing if you want it to survive. 3 guys 4 ft down from the top and this has held up to 80mph gusts and hours of 50mph winds without damage

I am actually thinking about trying to change out this thin coax with rg8x and see if there is an improvement. There is about 40ft of this on the balun and feedline to the top of the antenna...this has to be close to a 3db loss on 10 and up.

overall, it's a great performer, even the 1/4 wave 2 meter stub works great...it will also resonate on 440 with so-so performance (probably from the lossy coax)

KD0CY Rating: 2012-02-21
Poor customer service Time Owned: more than 12 months.
In all fairness, first let me tell you that the MFJ-1798 multi-band vertical works well as a vertical antenna. I’ve been a ham for nearly 50 years and this is the first vertical antenna I’ve every used. It has worked great for DX and I’ve worked many countries in South America and Europe with 100 watts. It looks more like a contraption than an antenna, but it works…when it works.

All of the aluminum tubes were precut and pre drilled for assembly. All hardware is stainless steel and included an abundant supply of extra screws and nuts to replace the ones you drop and can’t find during assembly. The antenna even came with two extra 80 and 40 meter elements in case you cut too much off of one while tuning.

The instructions say it can be assembled in 4 to 6 hours. This might be true if you've assembled several before, but it took me about 14 hours for assembly mostly because of having to decipher the instructions. Many views you couldn’t tell which direction they were looking or cut views were unlabeled so you weren’t sure what you were looking at. Assembly was a little difficult and I’ve been assembling antenna’s most of my life. However, after installation it only required tuning on 40 and 80 meters. The other bands tuned fine using the provided dimensions.

About a 1½ years after installation it took close (indirect) lightning strike which destroyed the feed harness, but nothing came into the shack, thankfully. I called MFJ tech support to order a new feed harness and was transferred to Hy-Gain. I was told to expect shipment within a week. Three weeks later I was told that there was a part shortage and to expect shipment within a week. Two weeks later I was told there was a coax shortage and to expect shipment within a week. Four weeks later I was told the same thing. Three weeks later I as told they had lost my order. All in all it took nearly 4 months to receive a replacement feed harness. Obviously customer service isn’t a priority with MFJ.

In Kansas the wind blows and it didn’t survive 70-80mph gusts without some damage. The base mount bracket is twisted out of shape and at least the first two sections of the antenna are bent into a nice arc. I won’t order anymore replacement parts because of extended wait time. I’ll just leave it as is, as a monument to a poorly designed antenna for everyone to see.

Would I buy another one? No. Would I recommend to someone else? No. Another local ham’s Gap Titan DX survived the same winds that damaged my MFJ-1798. A better choice would be a Gap Titan DX vertical which is more heavily constructed to survive strong winds.



KI6RRX Rating: 2010-09-05
Rube Goldberg strikes again Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
The bad: parts missing, wrong thread size on PEM nuts, mis-color-coded wires, takes 8 hours to assemble & tune (alone,) wind resistance poor, performance so-so. I was able to get some help on the phone w/o a long wait on the color coding issue; the remaining problems were silently corrected in my shop.

The good: after this menagerie of crap was permanently retired after fewer than 6 months in service, it generated a lot of good-quality parts.

More or less a waste of time and money. But a nice pile of spare parts. Beware broadband HF verticals that advertise, "No ground radials required!" ONLY as a lost resort.
W6TMV Rating: 2009-12-15
Even better now! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Since my last review comments I have mounted the antenna on top of a 25 ft tower so the top is up around 50 ft or so (with a 5 ft mast) - and it is even better than before - the extra elevation improved bandwith/tuning a great deal (not sure how) and in recent contests I have been able to work the entire USA and other countries using only 500W at the most (that is all I have right now) - interested in others experience with elevating this antenna.
KG4MUW Rating: 2009-07-14
poor instructions, weak structural design, good performance Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
If you follow the instructions you will unlikely assemble it incorrectly. You will most likely have to dissemble and reassemble certain parts to figure it out. There is even a self-appointed 'evaluator' on the internet who has put his ant together incorrectly (while complaining about the instructions). I tried to use his 'guidance' and after I finished I realize he had the 80/40m stub facing the wrong direction.

I figured mine out but I would suspect some folks might be well advised to call the manufacturer when they hit the first snag. It might let them know they need to revise the manual.

Mine has handled 70mph winds atop a 51' tower and 5' mast. It bent a little but it is still working. I would recommend you spend a lot of time waterproofing with liquid electrical tape and 999 silicone. Some of the other reviewers have noticed the lack of waterproofing.

I have other antennas with which to compare so this is not just a report of the number of contacts made with this particular antenna. I have a 204' G5RV at 70' and a 160M off center wire meandering through the pines. From 80M-30M my wires will beat it hands down. I could not imagine using it on these bands effectively. It tunes on 160M and 60M but don't waste your time. On 20M and 17M it is about a wash as compared to my wires. DX on 20M seems to be a little better on the MFJ. The MFJ1798 is always superior on 15M-10M. It works on 6M but really can't compare to my 6M longwire or my 6M beam. However, when 6M is open it does not take much to have a good time and this ant will be adequate. I have not made any signal comparisons on 2M but it does work fine.

The match on 20M-10M is impressive. You can use these bands without a tuner. The worst SWR on any of them is 1.3. I did spend a lot of time tuning but it really is not that hard to tune and adjust and once tuned it seems to be very stable, even after it got bent. How it got bent is coming up.

The aluminum tube and the attachment to the mast is too weak. Mine now has a bend right at the point where the fiberglass insert goes inside the tube. It looks bad but still works fine. It will likely break there in the near future. I have begun lowering the tower when high winds are predicted.

KG4MUW
W0DOT Rating: 2009-05-10
Missing Quality Control Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Bought this based on suitability for site and reviews. After three weeks of trying still haven't gotten it assembled. Numerous errors in manual (parts and assembly don't agree with descriptions), missing and wrong parts, wrong phone numbers in manual. Have been promised replacement parts twice but still nothing. My opinion may change slightly once I get it assembled and operating but right now I'm pretty disappointed. I'll follow up with another review based on performance (or lack thereof).
I'm giving this a 2/5 because I'm a pretty forgiving sort of guy.
I must add that this is the third MFJ product I've purchased and had quality issues with all of them.
W0XS Rating: 2009-04-04
Not a great antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've had this antenna up for 2 1/2 years and it's one of the poorest antennas I've ever used. A ham from the local DX association helped me put it together and used his antenna analyzer on it so it should work but it hasn't. Parts were missing and had to be ordered. I had a long wire up about 15 feet in the air but my landlord made me take it down so I had to settle for this mounted to the chimney. The long wire, at far less than optimum height, did a much better job than this vertical. Very disappointing after spending $300 on it.