HF Antennas
While this page is about the AH-4, the concepts apply generally to wide range tuners and cheap, effective wire antennas fed with ladder line. The secret to operating on any HF frequency is not a fancy over-priced factory antenna, but something you can build for less than $50. The trick is to take the 50 ohm coax output of your radio and transform it to the impedance of your antenna. An automatic remote antenna tuner makes this task very simple.
You can design an antenna for:
Efficiency (performance) and Gain (pattern)
Wide Bandwidth (complete coverage of multiple bands)
Impedance (50 ohms)
To design the antenna for all three is pretty much impossible. So why do we give up on performance just because we want to use 50 ohms? This page presents an alternative to the traditional thinking of market-driven antenna manufacturers.
The Famous K0ZE and K9EQ Antenna Shootout
You can find out information about the AH-4 by clicking on the links below. I recommend checking out the Yahoo IcomTuner user group!