Hello all. I have room for a 30 foot mast. I'm trying to get above the roof line at least. It's not ideal but it's all I can do right now. I was thinking about an MFJ Mast. I'm looking for suggestions on an HF vertical antenna. I'm primarily interested in 20, 40, 80. Any help would be appreciated.
David
Hello and welcome to Prepared Ham!
The MFJ mast may or may not be ok depending on what you're looking at. They have several flavors. The telescoping versions are not meant for permanent installs and probably will not support a vertical. They are flexible like a fishing pole so any unsecured weight up there is going to make it top heavy and unstable. The MFJ masts are more useful as a tie point (for example, holding up the center of a dipole), or perhaps a 2 meter antenna.
As for antennas, very few roof mounted verticals work well on 80 and many of them aren't too hot on 40 either. How bad do you want 80 meters?
I can't tell you what to get but I can tell you what
not to get: Any roof mounted vertical antenna that claims to work on 80 up to 6 meters (or beyond) is probably a loser. They are what I call "Swiss Army knife" devices: They do everything half-assed well, but no one thing exceptionally well. The antenna AD details in his blog is a well tested design that is an acceptable tradeoff of space/visibility and performance.
If you have room in your yard for a vertical with buried ground radials, that would probably work better than any roof version. You do not have to dig up the yard or do any major excavating. When I installed mine, I just cut through the turf with a hunting knife and shoved the wire down an inch or two. The more radials, the better.