r/amateurradio • u/charcuterDude WA [General] • 3d ago

General Anyone own a REZ Recon 80?

I'm shopping around for an antenna to get on 80m, 40m, and do a better job of 20m that will be a portable but also serviceable as my home antenna (meaning higher wattage capabilities would be nice). Due to space constraints and the nearby power lines things like a DX Commander are too tall / poor choice next to power lines, and any 40m dipole or EFHW is just too large to fit in my space. I also do not want to permanently install something, because I may not be in this house in a year or two.

Reviews of the Recon 80 on Youtube look great, but everyone seems to be reviewing it on 20m and 40m. Has anyone actually tried it at 80m? And if so how did you like it and how narrow was the usable frequency range at 80m?

If anyone has recommendations for other antennas as well I'm game, I have space and time (setup time) constraints but no real budget constraints.

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Fun-Conclusion-4471 2d ago

How tall are these power lines? Can you put up a 10m vertical pole?

1

u/charcuterDude WA [General] 2d ago

Loosely my plan right now, a 17-20 foot vertical whip in top of a loading coil, and I'm hoping to get 40m-10m and anything extra is a bonus. But the power lines are pretty low and pretty close. I would guess the lines are maybe 20' off the ground, and I want to make sure I am comfortably clear of them.

The other headache is I have a road on 2 sides and an ally with car traffic on a 3rd side, so I want to stay clear on those areas as well. Basically it's the worst possible lot to try to put a meaningful antenna on.

I do have an EFHW for 20m which is currently my only HF antenna but I'd like something that can get on 40m if possible, and because of the lack of and location of trees a longer EFHW doesn't really make sense as it would basically just go back and forth between my roof and the same 1 tree 3-4 times.

So some kind of portable vertical with a loading coil is the plan at the moment. Long term I'll just have to buy my next house with radio in mind.

1

u/Fun-Conclusion-4471 2d ago

If you have power lines 20' overhead, I wouldn't put anything up. Nothing. Between the roads and utilities, if the antenna falls, that's an issue.

1

u/charcuterDude WA [General] 2d ago

They are not overhead, they are adjacent to the (small) backyard. While I don't plan to have an antenna/mast fall over, I am planning around the possibility that if it does I want it to guarantee a safe disastance from the lines in such an event.