I’ve been toying with buying a 17-foot telescopic whip for some time now. I didn’t really have a pressing need for it, since my 12-foot whip has been doing a great job for me. As a result, I kept talking myself out of buying it—until now. When I heard the news that MFJ was shutting down production, I figured I might as well buy one while they’re still available.
With no additional matching, you can adjust the MFJ-1979 to cover the 20M band and higher. I figured this whip coupled with my “Junk Box Coil” should easily cover 40M through 20M with the antenna fully extended. The four-foot height advantage over my 12-foot whip, should yield some performance improvement. With my older, larger coil, operation on 80M might be possible.
To test my assumptions, I made a trip to Evansburg State Park (US-1351, KFF-1351), where I was one activation away from a POTA “Repeat Offender” award. Like my last visit, it was raining, and I seemed to be the only one in the park.
I set up the 17-foot whip and coil on the back of the truck and quickly identified the proper tap for 40M. I used a Sharpie pen to mark the tap location. (The coil now has two sets of marks.) Despite an impending geomagnetic storm, I made my first 10 contacts in about 12 minutes. Not too bad for an early activation on a Friday morning.
After about 25 minutes, I switched to the 30M band and marked the tap location on the coil. I picked up eight contacts on 30M before giving 20M a try. It was no surprise that the SWR was a flat 1.5:1 with the entire coil bypassed. Although conditions on 20M seemed a little weak, I logged five more contacts before pulling the plug. I ended up with 25 contacts in the log. No DX or park-to-park contacts today, unfortunately.
For part of the activation, I used a plastic bag to keep the rain off the coil. When I got home, I brought the coil and the whip inside and dried everything off. While I had the whip extended, I measured the actual length. By my measurements, it’s 16 feet 11 inches long.
Based on this brief test, I made a few observations:
- Compared to my older 12-foot MFJ whip, I don’t think the quality of the MFJ-1979 is as good. The older whip just seems to telescope more smoothly. Some online reviews mention problems keeping the antenna from collapsing after using it for a while. In an effort to avoid problems like that, I’ll be extremely careful when extending and collapsing the whip.
- Performance on 40M, 30M, and 20M should be better than the 12-foot whip, given the additional length. A big difference? Given today’s band conditions, it was hard to tell.
- With the 17-foot whip and my coil, I can cover 40M. 30M, and 20M without adjusting the length of the whip. However, the 12-foot whip gives me 40M, 30M, 20M, and 17M without adjusting the whip. This lines up perfectly with the bands on my TR-35.
I won’t be retiring my 12-foot whip anytime soon. I think for most POTA activations, I’ll stick with the 12-foot whip out of convenience. For contesting and activities like Winter Field Day, I will probably go with the 17-foot whip. I have an old 20M mono band QRP rig I want to put back on the air in the near future. The MFJ-1979 should be perfect for that.
72, Craig WB3GCK
WB3GCK QRP Amateur Radio 
I have owned an MFJ-1979 for many years. It has fallen over a few times and has a few scars to show for it. I have found the sections feel a little loose but it hasn’t collapsed on me yet. I purchased another whip from AliExpress that is 18.5ft long. It is lighter and shorter when collapsed than the MFJ-1979. So far I am very pleased with it. It has an M10 thread with a 3/8×24 adapter. The adapter kept coming loose so I held it in place with some shrink wrap.
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Thanks, John. That’s reassuring that your MFJ-1979 is still holding up.
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Got several of the 16-19 foot CB base whips with integral coil in the base im going to use as endfed sticks. How do you connect the coil? is it inline with whip and end of coax as a add on coil or is it a transformer type matcher? Seems the added coil to make it a 1/4 wave whip using truck for ground would work as the present shorter whips im using now wrk. 73’s de N5UTV
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Hi Dave: I don’t know what kind of antennas you have. The whips I use are just radiators with no built-in coils or matching. In my case, the whip is connected in line with my homebrew coil. The mounting bracket in the bed of my truck connects the coax center pin to the coil/antenna. The coax shield is grounded to the body of my truck. 73, Craig WB3GCK
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So yours are a 1/4 wave with a coil at the base. I also have a couple hamsticks I put on top of my van. They are centerloaded and work very well. Being only 6ft tall or so they probably dont do as well as your tall one. These tall ones I have are the 19′ or so poles that are transformer matched at the base and i think used as a CB band Endfed Half wave with small counter poises sticking out of the base. They need a matcher and so far dont seem to do as good as the 1/4wave hamsticks for xmit on the van. Hopefully the sun will stay quiet for a while. Frequencies above 18mhz have been a challenge this past week.
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Just to clarify, the 17-ft whip is approximately 1/4-wave on 20M, so I bypass the coil on that band. The coil is used on 40M and 30M to resonate the 17-ft whip on those bands. For bands above 20M, I bypass the coil and shorten the whip to make it a quarter-wave. Have fun out there! 73, Craig WB3GCK
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Thanks for the observations Craig; helpful as always.
Does anyone know of double crimped 17′ whips? The whip I received sometime ago from Wolf River Coils does “have the shakes.” In any moderate wind, several sections jiggle down a bit until the Hi_VSWR light comes on on my rig. Which 17′ whip is the least resistant to such behavior?
TNX – 72 de N4REE, Bob Easton
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