This morning I tried the ferrite rod antenna on 10MHz WSPR TX for an hour. As before, I mounted the ferrite rod VERTICALLY on the wooden desk with all other antennas disconnected - the only other antennas are a VHF colinear and a 10m halo, and both of these are around 10m away from the shack. Quite a respectable number of spots we obtained with 2.5W from the FT817.
So far I have not managed to get the ferrite rod antenna to match on 14MHz. It may be the losses in the ferrite are starting to impact performance?
I am still unclear how this tiny TX antenna is working: the assumption is a combination of a small amount of radiation off the H-field (ferrite rod coil) loop and some E-field radiation off the coiled vertical section above the tuned part. Then there is still the possibility that it is just acting as an efficient coupler into the house wiring that is doing the real radiation. Whatever, it puts a signal around Europe and occupies a volume with the tuning cap of just 15cm x 10cm x 5cm on the wooden shack table.
