PackTenna Mini EFHW
$$ยทยทยท
| Frequency | cut-to-band half-wave; no tuner on the design band |
| Bands | 20m single-band classic (32 ft); the EFHW-20/10 sibling adds 10 m on one wire |
| TX power | 100 W (QRP-first; the manual's own choke ladder: not needed under ~10 W, 'may or may not be necessary' at 5-50 W, recommended at 50-100 W) |
| Modes | SSB, CW, AM, FM, digital |
| Connector | 'around 50:1' matching transformer (manual verbatim) in the sealed matchbox; BNC to the radio |
| feedpoint | end-fed ~50:1 transformer; BNC |
Estimated (unverified): weight (no gram figure in any official source - boutique irony noted)
The mountaintop logic is airtight: a resonant half-wave needs no tuner, an end feed needs no center support, and PackTenna's execution strips the remainder to grams without strip-mining the engineering - the transformer is honest, the choke advice is tiered rather than omitted, and the winder-as-chassis design means nothing rattles loose in a pack. For SOTA and minimalist POTA, this is the reference single-band wire.
One band per wire is the discipline (the 20/10 sibling stretches it to two), 26AWG-class wire demands gentler handling than backyard wire antennas get, and QRP-first hardware means 100 watts is the ceiling, not the cruise. The boutique price per gram is real, even when justified.
The SOTA standard for a reason: resonant, tunerless, gram-honest, and engineered by people who obviously climb. Multiband ambitions point at its random-wire sibling or bigger EFHWs; single-band purity points here.
PackTenna built its reputation on a specific kind of honesty: portable antennas engineered like instruments and weighed like contraband. The Mini EFHW is the line's purest expression - thirty-two feet nine inches of fine wire cut as a true 20-meter half-wave, end-fed through a soap-bar-sized sealed transformer the manual rates at 'around 50:1' - qualifier theirs; the genre usually says 49:1 - converting the end-feed's three-to-five-thousand ohms to coax with no tuner required on the cut band. On a summit, 'no tuner' is not a convenience - it is one less box, one less cable, and one less thing between you and the activation.
The design's charm is in the disciplines: the wire winder is the chassis, so the packed antenna is its own case; the wire is gram-counted 26AWG-class copperweld that rewards gentle handling; and the manual tiers its own choke advice with QRP candor - under ten watts a choke is typically unnecessary, in the 5-to-50 range it 'may or may not be necessary,' and from 50 to 100 it is recommended. That is a manufacturer doing the common-mode physics out loud rather than hoping you won't ask. The precision dual-band school and the value-wire school bracket it from either side; PackTenna's niche is the gram-per-performance frontier between them, and a QST feature gave the little line - designed by George Zafiropoulos, under the Sierra Radio Systems roof - its national introduction.
The catalog logic is modular: this single-band purist, an EFHW-20/10 sibling that adds 10 meters on the second harmonic, and the 9:1 random-wire stablemate for operators who'd rather carry a tuner than choose a band in advance. Pick by philosophy; the hardware quality is the constant.