I have been joyfully watching YouTube videos of many other Amateur Radio Operators from literally all over the world for several years now. The one guy who I enjoy watching the most is M0MCX - Callum McCormick in the UK who is a great experimenter and creator of the DX Commander. I enthusiastically recommend anyone reading this to check out his DX Commander Youtube channel here.

Cal designed this antenna as an analog to a fan dipole - a dipole antenna with many resonant “legs” for each desired band, making it an aerial to use on any and all HF bands without the need of a transmatch or ATU. Cal turned it sideways into a vertical “fan” - a telescoping mast that holds single wires for each band or band combination.

For example, my DX commander (which I just put together two days ago) has six wires cut for: 10, 12, 17, 20, 40/15, and 80/30 meter bands. The 40 meter band element is 1/4 wavelength, or or about 10 meters in length - in practice it’s slightly less. The bandwidth for a vertical on 40 meters is very wide giving SWR across the band below 2:1 when cut to resonant frequency in the band where desired. Callum found that by folding over the 40 meter element at a point that perfectly tunes 40, with a bit of extra length folded over he was able to perfectly tune 15 meters to “behave” as a 5/8 wave on that band. Two for the price of one.

It gets even better. If one chooses to forgo a wire specifically cut for 30 meters, and replaces this with a 1/4 wave wire for 80 meters (actually ~19.5 to 19.8 meters in length) one can “tune” that wire to work on both 80 AND 30 meters.  The 30 meter band is very near the third harmonic for 80 meters, and so both bands work on that wire.

The mast of the DX commander antenna system is about 10 meters (actually about 9.8m I think) and while the 40 meter element goes right to the top and is fed through an eyelet at the top of the pole, the 80 meter wire comes off at a lower support point to form an “inverted L” antenna for 80 meters.  The end of that wire is attached to a length of suitable rope and suspended by a nearby tree or other structure.  Currently my antenna  on 80 meters is more of an inverted “V” but I intend to change that going forward. Nevertheless, my DX commander is currently working perfectly well on 80, 40, 30, and 20 meter bands.  I have yet to try out the upper bands simply due to poor conditions, but I am looking forward to better propagation days ahead -  and lots of fun with this antenna!