Miracle Whip Antenna

Alan - You aren't missing anything. The Miracle Whip is an inefficient antenna. It will not do better than your short piece of wire hooked to an antenna tuner. It will probably do worse. The only miracle is that they can sell it for such a high price.

For short antennas, the radiation resistance of an antenna decreases as the square of the length. So an antenna that is half as long will have a quarter the radiation resistance. As the radiation resistaance goes down it starts to be comparable, or less than the loss resistances, so much of the power input to the antenna is dissipated in the loss resistances and the efficiency goes down. Way down.

The SWR is low in large part due to the high loss resistance of the antenna.

It is not the current as such that does the work in an antenna, but rather the sinusoidal motion of the individual electrons in the antenna wire that cause time varying electric fields in space and hence electromagnetic radiation.

Someone in G land, whom I think is on this list, has plans for a homebrew "Miracle Whip". At least he admits it is an inefficient antenna, unlike hte commercial version. If you want to experiment with this inefficient antenna, I suggest that you try the homebrew model nand save yourself a bundle.

For short antennas, give the PAC-12. With a modest ground, it will outperform the Miracle Whip.

Dr. Megaacycle KK6MC/5
James R. Duffey KK6MC/5
Cedar Crest NM 87008 DM65