DX-B - 1/4-wave DX sloper

The DX-B is an expensive wire antenna (low band sloper) with coils that allows a simple one-tower ham radio installation to access the 30 meter, 40 meter, 80 meter and 160 meter bands.

I bought mine from an estate sale for $15. I needed a quick-and-dirty wire antenna for the lowbands as winter was approaching fast and my tower installation depleted my funds.  

Construction is fairly rugged (mine has already survived two ice storms) - but the antenna is coated with a UV coating that will peel (most of mine is now gone). The somewhat goofy mounting bracket that clamps to the tower doesn't seem very professional.... That could be improved. Installation is relatively easy. 

As with most sloper installations, performance and tuning is very site-specific. There are many variables to consider (angle of the slope, surrounding objects, ground connection via the tower, ...). In my case, the sloper is mounted at about the 55 ft level and is completely in the clear of any surrounding objects (I don't have any surrounding guy wires, trees or buildings). Changing the slope angle makes a big difference in the 80m and 160m SWR. 

The antenna performance by band:

• 40 meters... It won't compete with my XM240 mounted at 82 ft (I didn't expect it to). It seems to work a lot better on 40 meters that a short vertical (like my Butternut).
  
• 80 meters... This band was the most disappointing. Best SWR match I could find was a narrow ~40 kHz with a min of ~2:1. 
• 160 meters... The antenna is expectedly very narrow on topband.