Some operators will say that trap verticals aren’t worth a ‘plug nickel‘ as the saying goes. Yet others swear by them and attribute much of their success on the air to the trap vertical antenna in their antenna farm. The long and short of it is that you either love a trap vertical or you hate them. many hams have erected commercial trap vertical antennas and came away from the experience with a bad taste in their mouth. In defense of the trap vertical antenna one would have to wonder how the antenna manufacturers stay in business if the antennas don’t perform. How many time shave you heard an amateur radio operator sell (or give away) a trap vertical because "the $%#!& thing doesn’t work"? And then the ham who received the trap vertical swears by it by naming contact after contact they made on the very same antenna. What does the success that one radio operator has with a trap vertical compared to the failure of another tell you? In a word – installation.
What is a ‘trap vertical antenna’?
The traps (or coils) are inserted into an antenna to make it appear to be resonant quarter-wave antenna for each of the bands the trap vertical is designed for. Detractors to trap vertical will state that antenna power is lost in these trap sand therefore a trap vertical antenna should not be used.
Page tags: portable antennas, longwire antennas, vertical dipole antennas, monopole antennas, single band antennas, inverted-vee antennas, inverted-L antennas, longwire antennas