In honor of DX Engineering’s upcoming combined DXE Virtual Hamfest and DX Academy July 25, 9 am to 5 pm, we’ll be looking at one of DX Engineering’s popular traveling companions for DXing—lightweight, portable, and easy-to-assemble TransWorld Antennas.
DX Engineering acquired TW Antennas four years ago, ensuring that these high-performance antennas would still be available to Hams around the world. Today, they’re built to the same precision standards that made TransWorld a household name for HF enthusiasts. For the uninitiated, these antennas are essentially a basic structure consisting of top, bottom, and tee sections with interchangeable “array box center” sections that you can purchase separately for the bands you want.
Check out this video featuring DX Engineering’s Cory Gibson, W3CDG, showing how fast and simple it is to set up and operate a TW Antenna.
Here are some available packages:
5-Band Explorer (DXE-TW-2010L-P): This combo delivers excellent 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10M coverage with manual band switching. It includes a portable Quadrastand, basic antenna structure, and a handy travel bag. You supply the coax and your own powered transceiver. This makes an ideal choice for portable HF QRP operating.
5-Band Adventurer (DXE-TW-2010-P): Similar to the 5-Band Explorer with the addition of automatic band switching. The travel bag is available separately.
Band-Specific Solo Explorers: These monoband antenna systems give you an impressive presence on your band of choice. They come with Quadrastand and basic antenna structure components. Solo explorers are available for 80, 60, 40, and 30M. See all of them here.
5-Band Globetrotter (DXE-TW-2010P-P): While they’re ideal for travel, TW Antennas can also be perfect for stealthy home installations when paired with the TransWorld Permanent Mounting Pole that’s included in this package. The Globetrotter package features 20-10M coverage and automatic band switching.
DX Engineering offers two new TW Antennas accessories:
What do Hams think?
Five Stars: This antenna is everything the descriptions say it is: portable, robust, easily set up and taken down, the closest you’ll ever get to a plug-n-play portable antenna. It takes longer to uncoil the control cable and coax than it does to deploy this antenna.
Five Stars: I first saw one of these demonstrated at a club meeting and was impressed with the way it worked. I did not want to put up a tower and a big antenna even though I had space to do so, and this fit the bill. I had it set up on the Quadrastand for years and worked stations all over the world with no more than 100 watts. It is very non-directional and a very low angle that reaches out to virtually anywhere.
