This is a very non-technical review of the receive capabilities of the Buckmaster Off Center Fed Dipole vs an eBay 20m Dipole from seller “big_r_world”.
When I received the Yaesu FT-1000MP Mark V I was unimpressed with it’s receive capabilities, even strong signals sounded noisy. I had the Buckmaster installed in the same place as my previous 20m Dipole and I expected it to perform about the same on RX, maybe better.
When my new 20m Dipole came and I hooked it up, I installed it on the main VFO and the Buckmaster on the secondary VFO so I could compare them. The difference was so stark I was shocked. Signals were clean and very low noise floor on the S meter, the Buckmaster had a noise floor of S9 over most of the 20m band, the new Dipole had less than an S4 most of the time. On 40m there was nearly no noise floor it was so clean. Same with 70m!
I then decided to try and broadcast on 10m using the Buckmaster and the SWR was too high, the tuner was unable to find a match. Not good. I know part of this is my being a newb with antennas but the Buckmaster is sold as a 6 band antenna with just an internal antenna tuner.
I can’t do anything until I get an Elmer or somebody with a higher license to test on 20m, when I go to the next FRRL meeting I’m going to ask for some help.
For now, the “big_r_world” 20m Dipole looks to be awesome on the RX side, I tried to TX using it on 10m like I was able to do with my Icom 746Pro but it couldn’t do it. This could just be the difference between the Icom and Yaesu, it’s not like it was designed to use a 20m antenna on 10m.
The Buckmaster needs to be higher than the 20 meter dipole friend. Its also much longer than the other dipole and needs to be at its full length to be effective. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteAgreed, for TX it needs to be higher and spread out it's full length but in RX it's basically just a wire up there no? If using the same length as the 20m since the house is only so wide should they not handle RX about the same?
Maybe I'm missing something, I ordered the ARRL antenna book so will be hitting that hard when it gets here.