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write your own review of the Cushcraft A3S.
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VE3TMT
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 17, 2009 15:55
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Excellent first beam
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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After having the antenna up for 6 months it is still meeting all my expectations for a small beam. My city lot doesn't really allow for anything bigger and the A3S fits the bill perfectly. Haven't worked K4M or the Antarctic station yet, but I can hear them. If you are in the market for your first beam, as I was, the A3S is a nice choice. Lightweight, small footprint, and doesn't require a large rotor to turn. I turn mine, along with an A27010S with a Yaesu G450XL and have had no problems so far and we had 90+ km/h (almost 60 mph) winds here this summer and no problem holding the beam still. If I didn't have to take it down to install, I would pick up the 40m add on kit!
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WB5JEO
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 31, 2009 13:08
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Nice Value
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I tagged it Great, which is to say it's a good antenna and a great small Yagi. I've had this one for something like 25 years. It's old enough that all the plastic end caps and trap caps have broken down and fallen off. The last time I put it back up, I just taped up the open ends of the traps to keep wasps out. It's consistently demonstrated the gain and F/B I would expect of this class of antenna, has been easy to turn with light rotators, and tuned up fine with the recommended assembly. I do not get heavy ice, but it's never flinched, whatever the wind. I guess it will just go on forever. I almost feels like it would be a dirty trick to replace old faithful with something up-scale. Maybe I'll but it a 40-meter kit for its 25th anniversary.
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VY1EI
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 16, 2009 11:14
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Solid design
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I purchased the A3S two years ago, and then added the 40 meter dipole kit a few months ago. This is my first Yagi.
Solid beam, no problems at all. All parts were in the kit. At 27 Ibs, I could handle it easily. Advice was to use a portable workbench to balance the Yagi when assembling it and that helped a lot.
The 40 meter kit is giving me much better reception than my dipole ever did.
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VE3TMT
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 3, 2009 03:52
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Excellent first beam
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Bought the A3S from the estate of a local ham who recently passed away. It is my first beam in 19 years of hamming and I was very excited to get it up on the tower. I completely disassembled it, replaced all the hose clamps and trap end covers before putting it back together. After assembly I balanced it on some plastic garbage cans to check for resonant points. All checked out and within a few days it was on the tower. I have a small 2m/440 beam mounted 4' above it and experience no interaction between the two. The footprint is small, and it is turned easily by my G450XL rotor. It's only up 32' but it beats the pants off any vertical or wire antenna I have used in the past. I'm looking forward to the sunspots. You can see it my QRZ.com page.
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N8FXH
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 2, 2009 19:15
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Workhorse
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have been using mine for over twenty years now and it's still going strong. For the price I could not have asked for more.
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AG4T
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 2, 2009 18:58
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Best Antenna Ever
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I bought my Cush Craft A-3 in 1979. At the time I was stationed at Zaragoza Air Base, Spain. This is one of the windyest places in the world, all the time. This antenna sustained heavy winds almost evfery day for three years. No problems. It also served me well during four years in Alaska with heavy snow and ice. It never failed. More recently Huricane Wilma hit Miami and the center fiber glass insulator in the driven element broke. That was an easy fix. The antenna has been in continued use for 30 years and I hope to use it for many more.
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N0MUD
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 27, 2008 14:22
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Perfect Beam
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I bought mine used in 2003 so I have no idea how old it is and the manual did say A-3s. Only problem I ever had was putting it up on top of my 60 ft tower, it was mounted wrong and after some extremely heavy winds the rotor split in half and the antenna came down half way and hung by the coax cable and rotor cable. Brought it all the way down, this was October 2007. June 2008 it was put back up and with a better rotor and mounted correctly having a ham friend that knew what he was doing got it back up on top of the tower. Lately we've been having some really heavy winds and so far it is handling the winds with no problems. I havent taken count on the countries I've talked with the A-3 but I really like the antenna. My Yaesu FT-897d with the tuner, tunes the antenna within seconds and never any SWR problems. You can't go wrong with the Cushcraft A-3. I have no use for the 40 meter add on so no comments there.
Take care I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and is planning on a very Happy New Years. Lets hope for some great openings on ten meters this next year.
73's, Mike, NØmud
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NF8S
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 27, 2008 12:06
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A3S SWR
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I purchased the A3S with the 40 meter kit, a year and 2 months ago. Assembly took some time but I wanted to make sure it was together correctly. The Antenna worked Great, the SWR was very good including 40 meters. About a month ago we had a blowing rain storm that turned to ice overnight. I'd been working the bands until early in the morning but did get back up to work a net. As soon as I keyed the mic on 40 meters the red lights came on and HI SWR flashed everywhere. I Checked the feed line with my MFJ-256 analyser and all the bands had SWR problems. After climbing the tower a couple of days later, and swapping feed line, I pulled the antenna down and started looking for the problem. I think I read every review on eHam and checked everything I could. I opened each trap up and check for arching, continuity and other problem, but outside of a very small amount of water in one trap everything checked out.
I contacted Cushcraft and received exceptional technical support from John David. We communicated via phone and email. John walked me through some checks for the traps, checked to make sure everything was installed correctly, and guidance for testing the antenna on the ground. At the end of the day, I removed the balun, rechecked all the measurements and checked the SWR with the Antenna pointing straight up "Vertical" with the Reflector about 4 ft above the ground. SWR was in the 1.2 to 1.5 range or less on 10, 15, and 20 meters. 40 meters varied, but was around 1.4 to 1.7 on the tower. It was around 2.1 on the ground.
My guess on what caused the problem would be ice in one of the traps. I did remove the balun and installed the antenna with a coax choke.
The Antenna outside of this problem has worked great, it went through a 65 mile per hour wind storm this summer without a problem. Its a great Antenna for the price and I've worked every continent in the world with it. Hats off to Cushcraft and their great customer support.
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N0AH
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 17, 2008 06:49
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Overlooking typical QC Issues....a great antenna for 40M too!!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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The A3S with the 40M kit is an exceptional bargain. I have recently placed it on top of my 45 foot roof top tower and have been working into EU/PAC on gray-line propagation. On 40M and have had very good contacts with EU and all over the world on 20M. 10 and 15 meters are dead this cycle thus far so no real opportunities to check things out here.
This is my second A3S purchased in a year. The first one had no flaws. This one unfortunately had several pieces of inner-diameter tubing inside larger aluminum sections which had gotten stuck during transit. Burs inside these larger pieces caught the smaller pieces and kept tem from just falling out as they were being unpacked. Even the fiber glass center boom insulator got caught and had to be tapped out carefully using a broom handle.
Drilling was also an issue on the elements using the u-bolts to boom assemblies. The holes on the elements to be mounted using the u-bolts were off. They were too narrow and had to re-drilled. I also had one mounting bracket for the element guy rope which needed re-drilling.
Things happen and in reality, none of these short falls have hurt the performance of the antenna. John ant Cuchcraft has been good to work with on settling any issues. But if I were to take the A3S anywhere, I would want to build it first to make sure it is all working.
I am using a 1:1 balun which really gives me a lot more usable BW on 40M…..about 150KHz at 2.5:1 SWR. Minimum SWR at resonance is 1.3:1 SWR. Upgraded from my Yaesu FT450 to a FT800 rotor.
Of note, I am using ICE broadcast filters and have grounded my coax and station as well as I can. This has really shaven off a lot of ambient noise to whereas I can enjoy DX’ing on 40M in the suburbs. The 1430 a.m. towers are very close to me an over-load my radios with the antennas un-hooked on the entire hf spectrum. I hear nothing now with the antenna tuned and grounded.
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N0AH
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Rating: 5/5
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Nov 17, 2007 21:00
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KISS
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Keep It Simple Stupid- I'm speaking to myself.
I shopped forever for one of those high tech beams and after 3 months, it got here and went back three days later after pure pain and money only to get it not to work. That's all I have to say about that-
Now for the A3S. For reference, I tested it against a Hustler 6 BTV. I did the comparision during the November 2007 Sweep Stakes.
KH7X was just there 4-5 db on the A3S or gone in the noise on the vertical. He was the perfect station to compare as it was just around our sunset here in Colorado.
The F/B and F/S were very exciting on this little pistol during SS. I really had a ton of stations to measure the antenna's performance all day- FB!
I could get into a lot more numbers. But my main point is to have one investigate further into the idea of buying reinvented antennas when existing proven antennas may work just as well.
I picked up my A3S here in Denver the same day I decided to get one. Nice start. The A3S took around three hours to build, test, re-adjust and then permantly mount. My MA5B was almost a full day project. (and in comparision, if you have the room, go with the A3S (-: )
TUNING
I used my MFJ-259 analyzer on a 25 foot RG-213 line for tuning. On the ground using plastic saw horses, we got the SWR down 1.2:1. (Don't be fooled, the proximity of the antenna to the ground during this process will mess with your head once you mount the antenna)
On the tower, 20M went up to a minimum resonant point of 2.7:1. 10 and 15M remained the same. Why, oh why!!!!! (Nancy Karigan gate)
The reason for this was simple. Because the feedline was short, the impedence mismatch between the antenna and coax would be most obvious on the lowest frequency.
The antenna analyzer was seeing more loss on 20 meters reflected in the SWR reading. Not helping things was that I was using a RF ckoke at the feed point and not the 1:1 balun.
However, attaching my permanant 75 foot feedline brought some great positive changes to the SWR. It hid everything!!!!!
20M at resonance went down to 1.2:1. I still was lossing 10% of my energy based on what I learned earlier but due to length of the coax now, I wasn't seeing it. Poof!
Why? Simple. It was not making it back to the analyzer due to loss of energy as it was reflected back all the way back on that longer feed-line.
Does this make sense?? YES! Why do you think they say always check your SWR as close as possible to your antenna's feed-point, if possible, after it is mounted?
Trust me, one of the world's top 20 amateur radio contestors explained this one to me-
If you want to use a 1:1 balun, you might get a broader range, but your lowest resonant point may not always be effected. I could have swapped out the RF choke with a balun, but forget that- It's splitting hairs.
I'm using RG-213, a Yaesu 450 rotar and the antenna is about 45 feet high adding my roof and the roof top tower heights together.
I have had probably 25 antennas over the years. I have really enjoyed this part of the hobby. The A3S has allowed be to re-gain sone energy with an antenna that works very well under the KISS mantality.
If you would like more information on the antenna, please feel free to email me at dinsterdog@aol.com
FYI Please excuse any poor grammar-
73 Paul Veal MAED
N0AH
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