Brian, if you're in the mood of experimenting a bit, here's an idea for you; we know that the AX-1 covers the 20, 17 and 15 meters bands, now... what about adding it 30/40 meters (or even more bands) coverage
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Here's the idea
We start by building or buying a 9:1 (just an idea, other ratios may be considered) UnUn and connecting it between the AX-1 and the coax feedline
Next we extend the antenna but we leave the top "thinner" section recracted and then we find a way to clamp to the top of the antenna a piece of wire which we'll then layout as an "inverted L", hanging it to (say) a tree or whatever support, such a wire may run horizontally or sloping up or down, as the conditions allow (an up slope would be nice)
Now we adjust the wire length to find a decent match on the "extra" bands we want to cover, at this point we have the antenna ready and can pack everything and bring the stuff to whatever spot we want to use for our operations, once there, we setup the antenna, add the 9:1 and deploy the additional wire
The idea is that the antenna could then be used "as is" for the "standard" bands it covers and with the additional 9:1 and extension wire to allow covering additional bands, such a setup may be useful in case the higher frequencies are "closed" or, for example, willing to play NVIS on (say) 40m when we are in a valley surrounded by mountains
What do you think ?
[edit]
Judging from the result I obtained by checking a (very raw!) model, a wire of about 40ft and a 9:1, plus a 17ft counterpoise, should allow to "tune" all bands from 10 to 40 meters (and possibly 60m too) with NVIS radiation on the lower frequencies, by the way the additional wire length will need to be adjusted on the "real" antenna measuring the SWR on the various bands to find the "sweet spot"; an alternative may be using a 49:1 UnUn and cutting the wire to obtain an "inverted L" EFHW for the 40m band (if other "non resonant" frequencies aren't of interest)
