MFJ-1982MP EFHW
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| Frequency | 3.5 MHz fundamental plus a harmonic ladder dense enough to land usable SWR even on 17 and 12 (manual's own table) |
| Bands | 80m, 40m, 30m (tuner required - resonates ~10.8 MHz), 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, 10m |
| Type | end-fed half-wave |
| Gain | 0 dBi |
| Polarization | mixed |
| TX power | 300 W (300 W PEP (the MP tier; HP = 800 W, and the family runs down to 30 W LP versions)) |
| Modes | SSB, CW, AM, FM, digital |
| Length | 4023 cm |
| Weight | 400 g (14.1 oz) |
| Connector | 49:1 matching transformer in the weather-resistant box (UHF-female port per the manual diagrams; manual text doesn't name it) |
| Mount | tree/mast support |
| feedpoint | end-fed 49:1 matchbox to 50-ohm coax |
Estimated (unverified): wire gauge (the manual is silent); connector named by diagram, not text
The biggest bang-per-dollar in wire antennas while it lasted: a full-size 80 m half-wave with working harmonics on the classic bands, deployable by one person in an afternoon, fed where feeding is convenient. The 300 W tier covers every barefoot rig with margin, and the matchbox survived weather that killed pricier boxes.
132 feet is still 132 feet - the fundamental's price in real estate - and 30 m needs the tuner the other seven bands don't. The ICAS rating means digital-mode operators should read the Curie-temperature warning twice, and discontinuation moved replacement matchboxes from cheap to scrounged.
The working ham's EFHW: all the genre's convenience at MFJ's price, gone with the company. Used examples are worth grabbing if the matchbox tests healthy - the wire is just wire, but the box was the bargain.
The MFJ-1982MP was the volume-market version of amateur radio's favorite modern wire antenna: an end-fed half-wave cut for 80 meters - 132 feet of wire - with a weather-resistant high-impedance matching network at the feed end. The EFHW recipe needs no introduction by now: resonance on the fundamental, workable resonances marching up the harmonic ladder - and at 132 feet the ladder is dense enough that the manual's own SWR table covers all eight bands from 80 through 10, the WARC bands included, with only 30 meters flagged tuner-required - coax connecting at the wire's end where the operator actually stands, no radial field demanded. MFJ's contribution was less invention than democratization - the company sold the recipe at a price that made it the default first wire for a generation of new HF operators.
The family structure told you what you were buying: MP meant 300 watts PEP, HP raised the transformer to 800, LP shaved it to 30 for the QRP crowd, and the 1984 series halved the wire to 66 feet for 40-meters-up service. The matchbox holds a 49:1 transformer, the wire hides a 6-turn compensating inductor six feet from the box (trim at the far end only, the manual insists), and the grounding chapter is unusually opinionated: a ground rod at the feedpoint is the primary plan, a 15-20 foot counterpoise under the box the fallback - and the manual explicitly argues AGAINST a choke at the matchbox input, on the grounds that no practical choke blocks enough impedance there; better, it says, to reference the shield firmly to RF ground. (The community's rig-end choke remains compatible advice - MFJ's warning concerns the antenna end.)
Against its boutique relatives - the precision dual-band school, the ultralight portable school - the 1982MP was the value play: more wire, more bands, less refinement, a third the price per foot. MFJ's May 2024 shutdown ended that arithmetic, and the affordable-EFHW slot it occupied has been boutique territory since, which makes used examples with healthy matchboxes one of the quiet bargains of the post-MFJ used market.