MFJ-2290: Short Antenna that Helps Hams Stay on Air

Quietly, almost as quietly as one can be, MFJ Enterprises of Starkville, MS, has become a giant in the Ham antenna market. Just recently, although no one in New England knew much about it, Cushcraft Antennas was up for sale and MFJ bought it and the likely result will be some interesting antennas.

That was the case when MFJ purchased HyGain a couple of years ago and it continues to be the case in with its own antenna line. Indeed, when we had the chance to check out the MFJ-2290, we jumped at it. Actually, there were two reasons:

1. It is practically invisible in the grove of trees in front of our new home

2. It handles full power and its low takeoff angle is great for DX, especially as the new sunspot cycle starts up

We also had the chance to check out one of MFJ's 300-watt automatic antenna tuners and we found the tuner a pleasure to use and the interesting part is where MFJ advertises the antenna tuner as a device that would remember the settings for a frequency, we found that it did. We went off frequency many times and when we came back to the frequency where we spend a good deal of our time - 3.943 MHz - the tuner put us right back at 1:1. Indeed, worst case, last winter during a heavy snow, we found it was about 1.25:1 so the rig put out full power.

That's not what we're talking about today, though; it's the MFJ-2290 a 43-foot antenna that's about as versatile as you can get. You can ground mount it - MFJ even gives you instructions on how to make it a permanent installation - or you can fence-mount it. If you want, you can even lag it into your house joists.

The beauty of this antenna is that it uses thick-walled aluminum in its construction so that it will last for years and we found that it has a full power (1,500-watt) balun mounted at ground level for ease of use.

About the only thing you have to remember is that this is a vertical antenna is it is essentially a quarter-wave antenna at a given frequency. This means that in order to make it function correctly you will need to have a system of radials at least 43-feet long to match things up. These radials, which are ground-mounted and are attached to the antenna via a 3/8s-inch nut and bolt, provide you with the "missing half" so that the antenna will load up correctly.

Also, the radials also provide a bid more stability for the antenna, although not much. Still, without them, you'd do just as well jamming a pipe in the ground and expecting it to radiate a signal. You might get a flat match with a tuner but the only people that might hear you are the birds on the trees.

To say that we were excited with the antenna arrived last winter and we got it ready to go was putting it mildly. It was just after the Christmas holidays and everything was on backorder. Well, the day arrived and the UPS guy dropped a huge, heavy package in the front hall and we knew what it was.

Well, after getting it to the back side of the house, we preceded to take things apart and make sure everything was there - it was -- and then we put it together. Nothing could have been easier.

The first thing they advise you to do is mount the "stinger" at the top and a secure it with a couple of nuts and setscrews, which we did and then we proceeded to count out the number of 0-clam-s and C-clamps to make sure everything was there and it was.

The next instruction was to take a permanent marker and mark each piece of the antenna four-feet from the end. Since the swaged pieces slide easily into one another the marked spot was a great way to figure out just how far to extend each antenna piece. As you can see from the illustrations, the antenna, even without all of its pieces fully extended is a long device, but it certainly shortens up - and gets a log heavier, too or it seems that way - when you slide the pieces together.

Since the antenna project was actually a wintertime project, it actually means two things in New England:

1. * The antenna project will work

2. * The antenna project will work well

We have had a chance, now, to use the antenna for the last four months or so with a TS-430 and an MFJ autotuner and we've worked some interesting DX, although we have to admit at the times of the day we primarily work there's a lot of early morning absorption, but we did try tuning around a bit in some of the contests and we had no problem at all working the stations we wanted to work.

Setting the autotuner to auto and then choosing the band, plus pumping about 10 watts of RF through the system brought it into tune quickly and we were able to work a couple of Eastern Europeans and there was an interesting TE opening one quick day (that's the nice part about being semi-retired, I can play radio whenever I want to) where I was able to work a couple of South American stations.

The MFJ-2290 is one of a new breed of antenna that recognizes the restrictions many hams face and it is so thin from a distance that it almost disappears so you have to know it's there when you are using it. We'd suggest doing a couple of things if you are planning to ground mount it. They are:

• * Putting a small fence or border around it to keep kids and pets away from a live RF device

• * Hiding it inside a piece of PVC plumbing pipe and making it into a nice flagpole. This way no one will know there's an antenna on the inside and you can be patriotic, too

Just remember to bury to cable so people won't have anything to look at and comment on to your condo or housing association and also make sure that all of the radials are buried, too, because they are live. By the way, we did do some testing to find the optimum number of radials to use and we did find that, as suggested by MFJ, 16 is the magic number. The more the merrier, of course, but if you only have space for 16 radials then use that number and you'll find your performance is great.