I linked this up to the Tecsun PL-600 field day style for experimentation with about 10 metres of coaxial between the whip and the power unit.

Performance wise, I was pleasantly surprised. The cost when I purchased it in 2017 was €39 euros plus €9 euros shipping to me here in the UK. The units can be ordered direct from him via email.

Many of Roelofs customers like listening to the lower frequencies, this antenna seems to have a loyal following with LF/Broardcast AM radio enthusiasts as well as regular HF ssb listeners. The antenna is designed and each one is custom built by Roelof Bakker (callsign PA0RDT) a radio amateur from The Netherlands. So, to save any confusion, This one is the original PA0RDT mini-whip so to speak. Its a nice little project to build and experiment with I suppose. It should be said that this design is very popular amongst the DIY / Homebrew community and the use the makers original design and use their own locally sourced components. Normally I would be sceptical about the performance of such a small device for HF use but I read a few favourable reviews on the internet and decided to order one for using with my Tecsun PL-600 ssb radio and I thought it would be handy for trying with sdr-radio using a standard r820t2 usb dongle and spyverter HF upconverter combination. Needless to mention that both mentioned documents are already largely published over the Internet.This is an unusual antenna in my collection, the PA0RDT active mini whip.

If you which to learn about the details of this intriguing achievement, see Roelof Bakker explanatory document of his active mini- whip and find here the schematic of the antenna. Overall, the performance of the pa0rdt mini- whip is somewhat remarkable for its size and furthermore, with a very low noise floor but it is obvious to me that it wouldn’t replace a Beverage antenna by any means. One thing I noticed and which I can’t explain until now is that peak around 700 KHz coming from the whip, which happen to be a notable rise of the noise floor over that specific portion of the spectrum.

Now, for Trans- Atlantic mediumwave DX which is my main interest, signals are hardly showing up on the whip with no surprise given my inland location. Nevertheless, with some little help of the RPA- 1 preamplifier, Roelof Bakker’s pa0rdt mini- whip managed however to bring some decent competition to one of my Beverages as shown on the above screen capture, using HFSpan on a 0- 10 MHz scale. As previously mentioned, I was sceptical about the mini- whip performance given the fact that I’ve been used to work with long Beverages for years.

Pa0rdt mini whip antenna