MFJ-2286 Big Stick HF Antenna

Originally posted on January 31, 2013, but updated on Dec 2018

I needed an antenna to use with my portable station, and I wanted one which didn’t require acres of space to setup. I settled on the vertical MFJ-2286 with a MFJ-1918EX tripod as it seemed to meet my requirements. It’s a fairly new model, and there is little written about it online. It has a multi-tap loading coil, and can be used without a tuner from 7 – 55 MHz. It didn’t come with any instructions whatsoever, and is actually a collection of standard parts which MFJ sells separately.

I’ve had a bit of time to play with it a bit now, and I have to say I’m very impressed! I setup the antenna in my small backyard, and immediately started hearing many stations I’ve never heard before. Of course, I was just using a not-so-long random wire antenna previously (for receive only), so I imagine that any “real” antenna would be an improvement for me.

The antenna comes with a “Counterpoise Kit”, which is really just four copper wires joined together in the middle with a ring terminal, and with ring terminals at the ends so you can secure them. They are the just right size for my small backyard, ( about 10 feet long each), but I plan on making 8 longer ones for when I set it up in a larger space. I built a short extension cable to connect the counterpoise from the ground up to the antenna mounting bracket. Otherwise, you end up with shorter radials, a goofy looking antenna, and a serious tripping hazard if you connect them directly. Either way you are probably going to attract some attention once this antenna is erected, and you’ll want to watch out for people getting to close or stepping on the radials.

The antenna uses a loading coil at the bottom with a small wire and alligator clip “tap”. I was really hoping that MFJ would include some documentation as to where the best tap locations may be, but alas, they just shipped the antenna parts by themselves and expect you to figure it all out by yourself. I guess this is the “experimenting” part of ham radio. hihi! I don’t own an antenna SWR analyzer yet, but this antenna makes me want to buy one. It would be nice if someone published a table with all the tap locations and antenna lengths needed for the bands it covers, and if I can get my hands on an analyzer for an afternoon, I will do just that. The tapped coil, as far as I can tell, is only required for the 30M and 40M bands. 20M and lower can be tuned by removing the coil entirely (or setting it to the upper-most tap), and then shortening the whip to a 1/4 wavelength of your desired frequency. The stainless steel whip by itself is 17 feet long, so it’s just a tad longer than a 20M quarterwave. You’ll want to keep a tape-measure and calculator handy when using this antenna. I haven’t tried yet, but I bet it can also do a 5/8 wave 2M.

If you have an antenna tuner (I have an LDG IT-100), you can tune this antenna to cover 60M and 75/80M by setting the tap to the lowest coil (ie, the longest setting), and extending the whip fully. You could probably get it to tune 160M with that tuner, but it would be very inefficient, and the range wouldn’t be very far. I’m sure you could use the tuner on the lower bands as well, but using a tuner on an antenna which is already resonant to begin with defeats the purpose of a tuner, and just won’t work anyways. A potential pitfall of using a autotuner with this antenna is if you already have a particular frequency stored in the tuner, but use a different tap location the next time you use that frequency. Unless you manually tell the autotuner to do a full re-tune, it will use the settings stored for the previous tap location, and will result in a bad SWR to your radio. Fortunately, the IT-100 can easily be put into “bypass” mode so that you can manually tune the antenna yourself, without disconnecting the tuner.

I purchased the MFJ-1918EX tripod to support this antenna. The “EX” version comes with a 10ft extendable mast and gives you about 13 feet or so of height. Of course, if your antenna is up that high it makes it impossible to adjust the tap coil unless you lower it each time. It’s also arguable if raising a vertical HF antenna only 10 feet makes much of a noticeable difference in the real-world. My intention for buying this mast was so that I could also use the tripod with VHF/UHF antennas. So far, I just use the antenna at the lowest elevation for ease of adjustments. Something which worried me when I ordered the antenna was that MFJ stated that it would easily mount to a 1/4″ or 1/2″ mast, but the 10ft extension has a 3/4″ diameter at the top section. I was prepared to make a simple adapter if needed, but it turns out the antenna will easily mount to a 1 1/4″ mast. I’m not sure why they stated that, but it’s misleading.

Pros:

Portable Lightweight Small area required to setup Components are also useful for other antenna projects

Cons:

No documentation No 60M – 160M

Overall, I love this antenna, and would definitely buy another if something happened to this one.

Update:

So how well does it work?

After five years of use, it's held up okay, and works great! The small wire with the aligator clip broke off it's solder point one day, but that was a simple fix. I've witnessed the fully extended whip flex about 70 degrees in the wind one day before I took it down quickly! It wasn't damaged, but probably would have been if I left it up any longer. I've used it stationary-mobile with a Breedlove stake-pocket mount for my Ford Ranger 4x4 from many mountaintop locations with incredible results, along with a Kenwood TS480HX. With four 20 foot radials and a common mode fiter/choke, the antenna tunes to a perfect 1:1.0 SWR on 20M, and allows for very efficient communications. I even used the whip without the coil as a 1/4 wave for some mobile 6M SSB and FM a few times with great results.

Besides SSB, I've also used many digital modes with this antenna while portable, or stationary-mobile. I use a SignaLink USB, the TS480HX, and a laptop with fldigi and wsjtx. By heading out of the city to a remote area, the noise floor drops to nearly zero and you can hear so many stations, even with the solar minimum!

Questions or comments?

Send an email to va7acq@gmail.com

73,

VA7ACQ