M0CVO Off Centre Fed Dipole HW-20HP Review

This is a review for HW-20HP Off Centre Fed Dipole from M0CV0 Antennas. After reading the excellent review (way back in the January 2012 edition of Radcom) from the RSGB propagation guru, Steve Nichols (G0KYA), I thought I would give it a go.

The antenna is apparently designed to operate on the 20, 15, 12, 11 & 10m bands without an ATU, and the 17 and 6m bands with an ATU.

The antenna was set-up at the end of my garden in Felbridge, East Grinstead. It's semi-rural with a reasonably low noise floor. The lengths of the arms are 7m and 3.5m. It's specified at 400W CW and 500W PEP. A warning is given to reduce the power when using constant carrier data modes.

I mounted mine on a Spiderbeam 12HD pole at around 9M above ground and in an inverted V configuration. The ends were around 5m above ground. My selection of reusable cable ties (sure the best invention ever!) came in very handy for mounting the balun onto the pole.

The radio was an ICOM-705 running off it's battery. To produce the SWR graphs I used an H4 NanoVNA from AliExpress.

The results in terms of SWR were impressive (although not quite as expected). The maximum SWR across the 10, 17 and 20M bands was under 1.5. The maximum SWR on the 12 and 15M bands was under 2.0. The SWR on the 50M band was between 2.1 and 2.5 which is still in the range of most ATUs built into modern radios.

So the surprise was the 17M band which according to the documentation would need an ATU, but in my configuration did not. I'm sure next time I test it, the readings may be different.

Conditions were exceptionally poor on the afternoon that I tested it, but I received 50 reports with two Scottish QSOs. One on 10M and the other on 20M. I also spoke to stations across most of Europe without problems.

I look forward to using the antenna more over the next few weeks. It's easy to erect, well built, and has so far delivered promising performance. I can see it being really useful for portable operations, and having access to so many bands is really useful. I also look forward to testing it on FT8 and WSPR.

Just to note that the balun is around 280g, so you need to have a reasonably rigid pole to support this.

The antenna is available to purchase from the M0CVO website for £59.60 plus delivery.

https://m0cvoantennas.co.uk/Products/HFAntennas/HWRange/HW20

The only negative is that I found after purchase that is was cheaper from other sellers (including cheaper postage). I would have thought that buying directly would give you the best price. I will know in the future to check.

£53.95 - https://www.bowood-electronics.co.uk/buy/hw-20hp-this-is-an-off-centre-fed-dipole/

£52.16 - https://moonrakeronline.com/m0cvo-hw-20hp-multiband-hf-antenna-20-10m

Peter M0LMG (Written without the aid of AI)

June 2026