Testing the Difona HF-P1 Portable Antenna

The HF-P1 has a large following and gets good reviews. Reason enough to try it for myself. Mine came with a pouch and two setup options: a tripod and a screw-clamp attachment. The pouch fits nicely in the laptop compartment of my QRP backpack and doesn’t weigh very much at all.

Setting up only takes a minute or two and you’re on the air. I tried 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters. On 40, I couldn’t get any SSB contacts and didn’t try CW. On 20, the antenna worked similar to my ham stick, even with 10 watts. 15 meters was a breeze and there were no QSOs on 10. But the 10m test was cut short by my battery running low.

All in all, this antenna will become a staple in my QRP setup, simply because it’s so easy to deploy anywhere I could possibly need it. No throwing antennas into trees. Just put it on its tripod or clamp it to something sturdy. Job done.