Could this be the ultimate ‘poor man’s’ DX antenna?

And by ‘poor man’ I mean someone with extremely limited antenna space. Think of a strata unit with nothing more than a tiny balcony. Or an ‘over 55’ home with ‘absolutely no antenna’ caveat. Or, even worse: a city office.

Of course, with AH-740, ICOM had a different demographic in mind: the mobile land and sea users. In essence, this package is a short whip with an antenna tuner built into the base, remotely operated by the radio transceiver itself. Ideally to be mounted as high on a vehicle as possible. A perfect antenna kit for an emergency or even military use, covering 2.5 – 30 MHz. Yet as a DXer, I can see so many other applications for the AH-740. Running 50 Watts on digital modes on 12 or 10m into a short whip would still yield tones of long distance contacts (the antenna system would handle 125W PEP).

And if you do end up installing it on a 4WD or a Ute, as intended, then going portable would open many other opportunities for even more serious DXing. Personally I would be tempted to throw on a longer piece of wire, and add a couple of radials for fun on 40m and above.

Here are just some of the radios which ‘support’ AH-740 (or the other way around?): IC 7100/7200/7300/7610 as well as the professional mobile IC-F8101.

I don’t think you would be installing the IC-7610 in a Ute, but the IC-7300 being cheap as chips could be an attractive option.