I had a tarheel on my car for a while. I ended up selling it and taking the
radio out of the car as I found it too distracting from my driving.
It worked fine though. The problem with the tarheel is tuning. It has a very narrow bandwidth. So even small movements on a band need a retune. Not fun in an
emergency.
I like to do SOTA (summits on the air) and USIOTA/IOTA (islands on the air) activations. For these antenna size is a big deal. Antennas need to be small and robust.
For those reasons I have settled on Endfed antennas. Like all antennas, they are a compromise, but I have found them to be effective even in non-ideal sloper or L configurations. If you take the time to tune them for your band ahead of time, they prevent you even needing a tuner. I plan to take several on my
boat adventure for using on various islands and as backup for the
boat antenna(s). By then we should have sunspots again!
Here's a link to where I got mine. A few dollars more than some vendors but build quality is great:
https://www.lnrprecision.com/store/E...nnas-c10468543
For a boat I think 10m/20m/40m would be all I would take. When the bands come back the 10m should be rocking over
salt water. For now the 20m during daytime and the 40m is about as big as you are likely to be able to deploy on a boat (without a kite!).
Emergency-wise, the 10m is easy to deploy using one of the crappy poles linked here in the thread. I used one for my
BVI activations in 2015. If you were totally de-rigged you could use the crappy pole on one end and then set the 20m as a sloper to the other end of the boat. I'd set the pole at the stern, slope to the bow, and then run coax back to the
cockpit to get my
counterpoise. You'd get a long way afternoon to dusk.
tl/dr
Endfed pros - small,
cheap, no tuner needed, easy to deploy
Endfed cons - Less efficient radiator than full-size antennas
Re: hamsticks. I tested these on several island activations and the endfeds were far better. They suffer the same narrow bandwidth as the tarheels (they are more or less the same thing).