In case you haven’t heard by now, SteppIR, the manufacturer of very expensive HF antennas is getting out of the amateur radio business. Their announcement has caused a minor uproar in the amateur radio world, but personally, it’s not a big surprise to me. If MFJ couldn’t seem to find enough customers for their $300 – $500 Hy-Gain antennas, how many $5,000 antennas could SteppIR really sell?
What I’m surprised by is that no one has come up with a homebrew design replicating the functionality of the SteppIR antennas. The SteppIR design is quite complex—which is one reason that it costs so much—but hams are pretty creative. It seems to me that someone out there could replicate the SteppIR functionality for a lot less than $5,000 (the approximate price for a two-element SteppIR Yagi).
Perhaps someone has already. If you know of a homebrew version of the SteppIR antennas, please let me know.