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KJ6ER Antennas

May 2026

Summer Field Day is Coming June 27-28!

Start Planning Your Weekend Adventure

with Efficient KJ6ER Antennas

Dear Fellow Portable Antenna Geeks 😀

First of all, I would like to thank thousands of you for visiting my new kj6er.net website which went live in April. If you have not seen it yet, please take a quick peak and let me know how it flows and looks on your devices. The site includes all my free antenna content links, past newsletters, as well as signing up for my Antenna Geeks List and requesting a presentation to your Amateur Radio Club. I will keep it updated with fresh content, so share the site with all your ham radio friends and fellow antenna geeks.


Welcome to May, the unofficial first month of summer which concludes with Memorial Day Weekend. Regardless of the summer propagation conditions, the hot weather months always make for great outdoors ham radio fun! And to kick off the official summer season after the June 21st solstice, the ARRL Summer Field Day runs for 24 hours during the last weekend - June 27-28.


For me personally, Summer Field Day means combining this exciting annual event with a Parks On The Air (POTA) activation. Learn more about Field Day and how I pursue both Field Day and POTA successfully during the weekend. I share all my operating strategies, as well as my favorite KJ6ER portable antennas that I deploy to take advantage of both ham radio activities at once.


If you do not have the time, ability or interest to build your own KJ6ER antenna, you can purchase a beautifully assembled handmade antenna system as well as accessories on Etsy. More than 240 products have already been sold at the J-Systems Store on Etsy since June 2025 with over 60 perfect 5-star reviews from buyers.

KJ6ER Website
ARRL Summer Field Day
KJ6ER POTA and Summer Field Day
J-Systems Etsy Store

My approach this Field Day 2026 is to deploy two KJ6ER antenna systems: the new Marauder Moxon-inspired parasitic array and the very popular PERformer NVIS high angle radiation antenna system. I plan to leverage the Marauder for its fantastic +3.4 dBi gain and 15.0 dB front-to-back on 20M-10M to break through big pileups and grab some DX contacts if conditions allow.

KJ6ER Marauder

And to take advantage of all the big club stations and regional operators in my skip zone, I plan to deploy the PERformer NVIS with +2.5 dBi gain across seven bands, including 40M during the late afternoon and evening. Read all about it in my new Summer Field Day PDF!

KJ6ER PERformer NVIS

If you do not want to participate in the Summer Field Day event, no worries! I share how I also run POTA activations on the WARC bands (60M, 30M, 17M, and 12M) without all the band-packed QRM on the main Field Day HF bands (160M, 80M, 40M, 20M, 15M, and 10M). And don't forget that the VHF/UHF bands (6M, 2M, 1.25 cm, and 70 cm) are also active during Summer Field Day (off repeaters). We may get lucky and even get some Sporadic-E openings on these bands as well. There is something for every ham on Summer Field Day weekend!

This Month's KJ6ER Antenna Heroes

Each month I feature videos and blogs of hams sharing their own personal implementation of a KJ6ER antenna including how they built and deployed it, as well as how it performed. This month I am featuring four heroic KJ6ER Antenna hams. Let's take a look at POTA videos from a ham in Kentucky, one in Louisiana and one in Texas. And for something completely different, I share an excellent three-part blog post from what he calls himself a Minimalist Ham in Florida. Enjoy!

P. S. Watch this video interview I recently conducted with Stu Crawford VE9CF titled Solar Cycle 25 Ending? What Every POTA Op Needs To Do NOW!

Jerry Duggin KM4ZKB of Franklin, Kentucky has a unique YouTube channel called Budget Ham Radio where he recently featured his homebrew design and deployment of what he calls a Poor Man's POTA PERformer. I like his creativity! In this video, watch how he built and deployed his version of the PERformer with an emphasis on keeping the costs very affordable. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.

KM4ZKB YouTube Video
Paul Owen KJ5GKK Video

Paul Owen KJ5GKK of Zachary, Louisiana has a YouTube channel called Paul "The Southern Ham". In this video, he activates a beautiful park in southeast Louisiana with his version of the PERformer antenna he calls the Picnic POTA PERformer. Instead of using a tripod or PVC tube/spike, he deploys an adjustable clamp that attaches to a fence or picnic table. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Tim Hale K5OHY of Midland, Texas returns as a Hero this month with a fantastic YouTube video called Quarter-Wave Vertical Antenna Explained: Theory, Setup & How to Add Gain. He does an outstanding job of educating his audience and explaining how the antenna works while featuring the benefits of the PERformer antenna. He also demonstrates how he computer models the antenna and shows how the ground conditions directly impacts the antenna's performance. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.

K5OHY YouTube Video
Bob Easton Blog Post

Bob Easton N4REE of The Villages, Florida has a personal ham radio blog he calls the Minimalist Ham. In this three part series (Part 1 - Concept, Part 2 - Enlist AI, and Part 3 - EFHW vs. POTA PERformer), he provides a detailed explanation of how he used WSPR weak signal transmissions and the power of AI to analyze the performance of his end-fed halfwave antenna versus his homebrew PERformer. He does an excellent job of explaining his tests, analyses and results. You should also take a look at his About page.

If you would like your video or blog featured in one of my upcoming newsletters, share how you are building and deploying your own KJ6ER antenna. You will get visibility with thousands of my newsletter subscribers worldwide! Send me a link to your online content about any of my antennas and I will feature it in one of my future newsletters! I am very interested in how you customized the build for your own needs either as portable or at your home QTH. I know many of these videos and blogs already exist - send me a link to your favorite. There are many creative builders out there with wonderful tips and tricks. I would like to offer you a global platform to share your ideas!

KJ6ER Heroes Program

KJ6ER Beta Testers Program

As many of you know, I introduced a KJ6ER Antennas Beta Testers program recently to encourage interested hams to get draft PDFs of my new antennas in advance, build and deploy them, and then summarize their experiences in video. If you would like to become a KJ6ER Antenna Beta Tester, send me a message. Your early review of my draft PDF, antenna design and build helps me improve the content quality in the PDF, as well as the construction and deployment process.

ABR Coaxial Cables

Why not buy yourself a well-deserved gift of a fresh set of high quality ABR coaxial cables. If you use my callsign KJ6ER as the coupon code at check-out, you will receive a nice 10%-20% discount on your total order! Get your new ABR cables today!

Until next time, keep having fun out there! Building ham radio antennas is our last homebrewing frontier and I am dedicated to helping you do so successfully! See all my free antenna design plans on my website and at the cloud links below.



If someone forwarded this email to you and want to be added to my antenna geeks email list, send me a message and you will be the first to receive new KJ6ER antenna designs and updates! I am also available to present my antennas to your Amateur Radio Club via Zoom. Let me know if they are interested! 



As always, feel free to reach out to me if you ever have any questions, I'd be happy to help you! 🙂 73 KJ6ER, Silicon Valley

My mission is to design efficient and effective portable antennas for the every-ham that focus on the optimal integration of performance (high radiation efficiency), elegance (speed and simplicity of deployment) and convenience (ease of transport and storage). These designs are always shared for free with the global amateur radio community to encourage more radio operators to homebrew their own portable antennas. 

KJ6ER Antennas

Cloud Drive File Links (KJ6ER):

Greg Mihran, KJ6ER

Campbell, California

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