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| Reviews Summary for Buxcomm Windom 80-6 meters |
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Reviews: 25
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Average rating: 4.4/5
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MSRP: $60-70
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Description: This WINDOM is completely assembled, ready to connect your coax, and erect. BUX Model 806136 is SSB power rated at 1000 watts and includes three (3) insulators, PVC covered, Power-Flex, tinned, copper wire, connectors, and BALUN.
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More info: http://www.packetradio.com/baseantennas.htm
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write your own review of the Buxcomm Windom 80-6 meters.
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K2VI
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Rating: 1/5
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Dec 12, 2009 13:00
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Bad Attitude
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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Not only does he make his antenna's out of scrap pieces of wire but he has the attitude he is doing you a favor and he talks down to you.Good way to go out of bussiness buck.But what do we know were all a bunch of idiot's in bucks world.Also the balun i bought from him is now smoked and trashed.1.5 kw rating but only put in 600 watts SSB and a near flat swr.
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N4WEQ
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Rating: 1/5
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Sep 8, 2009 10:50
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Poorly Constructed
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I purchased a Buxcomm Windom 80-6 OCF antenna a couple of weeks ago and noticed the short leg had two wire splices and the long had one. This is straight out of the box. The joints had been wire crimped with a heat shrink over it. Also, the heat shrink at the point where the wire connects to the balun had slipped off and was showing bear copper to which I used almost a roll of coax-seal to fix. I thought what the heck; it looked like they made the whole thing out of wire scraps.
Yesterday I was working 20 meters and noticed my SWR was off. Wandered out to the back yard and here was the short side of the antenna flopping on the ground. Thank God neither of the wife’s dogs was out there at the time. Come to find out the crimp was gone from the short end insulator.
The build quality on this antenna is about as poor as I have ever seen.
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K8MFO
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 13, 2009 12:25
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Perfect For Me!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have been licensed for 51 years and am a serious DXer, with a 120 foot tower and an "aluminum jungle" in my back yard, and the latest and greatest radios in an air conditioned shack.
However, I am also a fancier of "boatanchor radios". I love the GLOW of old tube transmitters and receivers. In my barn/workshop I have some fine old radios. At the moment a Johnson Viking Ranger II is the transmitter, and I have the choice of either a Collins 75A4 receiver, or Drake 2B and R4C models. I have long been a fan of center fed dipoles using open wire or ladder line. Of course you also need an antenna tuner, and I have my choice of several. However, I wanted an antenna that would cover 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters with coaxial feed, and did not require a tuner. I looked at the G5RV and dismissed that option. Later I stumbled onto the BUXCOMM web site and read Buck Rogers' most interesting comments on the Windom. Decades ago I helped a top notch DXer and contester put up a Windom in a residential neighborhood when I was a student at Michigan State. His results were excellent!
Anyway, in the fall of 2007 I called BUXCOMM one evening and Buck Rogers - K4ABT himself answered the phone. I will leave it to you personally to decide whether that was good! Initially , Buck seemed to be in a hurry to close up shop and go home, and he was muttering a bit under his breath. So, being a bit direct, I said, "What are you muttering about, Buck?" That seemed to catch his attention! He and I proceeded to have a very pleasant conversation, and we talked about old radios and the GLORY DAYS of radio,etc. At that point I told Buck that I was interested in the "CW MODEL" of his 80 through 6 meter Windom. He told me that he would personally make one up for me as soon as we hung up, and he did! He also apologized for his earlier "muttering" and said he was going to include his high power balun at no additional charge!
My results with the 30 watts of output from my Ranger II have been quite satisfactory. In the CW Sweepstakes, 2007 running, I decided to go for a Clean Sweep of sections. So I made 80 QSOs in 80 sections -- this took 8 hours. OK -- Worked All States and most Canadian provinces in the time that most people sleep each night! At the end of November 2007 I decided to enter the CQ World Wide CW DX Contest, again with the Ranger II at 30 watts and the BUXCOMM Windom. Remember we are at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, so I only operated casually for 25 hours. The results again were satisfactory with a half million points and 108 countries in the log. I guess DXCC must have taken about 20 hours, which is not bad.
I continue to play around in various contests and to rag chew to my hearts content with the old radios and the Windom! Of course I am not saying the Windom is as good as my aluminum jungle on the big tower, but I do have a reference antenna out at the barn to compare it to. To put it simply, the Buxcomm Windom runs circles around a Cushcraft R7 vertical, and I have always been pleased with that antenna too!
I should also mention that my Ranger II loads just fine into the Windom on 15 meters, even though that is not advertised as an optimum band. Guess what? It also beats the R7 performance wise on that band!
So, what do you want? A well designed antenna that works? Then you may want to consider the BUXCOMM. Buck may be a foul mood when you call him on the phone, but he obviously knows how to design an antenna that works as advertised. Go to the website and read his thoughtful insight yourself, and make your own decision.
Thanks Buck! 73 .... Don K8MFO
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KJ4JGD
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 2, 2009 10:01
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Satisfied Customer
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Being a swl'er for years, I decided to take the plunge and get my ham license. I have used various long wire and verticals which were all home brewed. Since swr was never a problem on the receive side and I wanted to be on the air fast, I decided to go store bought. I have not been disappointed. I got the low power 4:1 version. Although not deployed by the book due to trees, building etc. the swr readings were great out of the box with no trimming. All bands were 1.6 or less except 80 and 10 which were both a little over 2.1, which I believe is more an installation issue (too low on one side,too close to trees on the other) rather than the antenna itself. The folks were polite, friendly and helpful. I will be happy to do business with them again.
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W9MHB
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 6, 2009 18:07
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Great!!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I have this antenna hung between two pine trees at 40ft. I have used it on every band from 80m through 70cm and it works as advertised. On HF I use it with a little manual tuner and I have no problems getting an SWR of 1:1. On 40m, and 20m I really wouldn't have to use a tuner as the SWR is below 1.5:1, however I choose to in order to get it to 1:1. I have worked 30 countries, and 46 states within my first year of being a HAM. I use this antenna on SSB and a multitude of digital modes.
Can't ask for much more for such a simple antenna, if you can't put up a tower and want a low profile antenna that gets the job done, order it!!!
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AE6RS
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Rating: 5/5
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May 19, 2008 23:27
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Fantastic improvement over my G5RV
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I had enough problems with my G5RV and finally set out to find the "best" multiband HF wire antenna that would fit in my yard. Buxcomm tech support patiently answered all my questions and gave sound advice, their web site was loaded with detailed plans and theory of operations, and other web sources pointed to windoms too...So 2 weeks ago, down came the 102' G5RV and up went the 80m Windom from Buxcomm.
Now I am filling the log book with countries I rarely could even hear before, much less work, even with 500w CW on the G5RV. I have "busted" some pile ups with a first or second call and got true 599 rpts from DX over 8K miles away. The low noise factor and gain does the trick. Also, I don't have RF into my son's computer speakers any more and I'm sure the neighbors are happier. The nearby powerline noise in RX is drastically reduced too...now, if I can hear'em, I can work'em pretty much. I really can get used to this setup!
I do use a tuner for the 30m band. With only 100w barefoot for the band, the 2KW 4:1 balun seems to smile and take it just fine.
I am advising our Field Day team to ditch the g5rv's as they don't compare at all...as Buxcomm support told me would be the case and explained why (they do sell quality G5RV's for those who still insist). I only wish I had tried a windom sooner and had more fun working DX over the years. I just built a 2nd windom for my jr. high ham station with Buxcomm parts. Check out my "tech" classroom at www.walnutvalley.k12.ca.us/suzanne/rsoikkeli
Now its time to break out the QRP rig and see what it will do too. I will be ordering parts for our Field Day windoms soon.
I rarely promote someone's product, but I make exception when it is this good. I certainly recommend Buxcomm for their quality gear, reasonable prices, and their knowledgeable/patient tech support. Thanks Buck!
Sincerely, Rick AE6RS
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KI4WCQ
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Rating: 2/5
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Dec 24, 2007 07:46
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A follow up--doesn't work for me
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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My 80-6 Windom worked great until I put 600 watts to it. The balum toasted in about 10 seconds. I guess his advertisment that the balum is rated to 1000 watts is a typo...he must have meant 100!
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KE7CQ
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Rating: 3/5
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Aug 18, 2007 23:33
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Electrically 1st One a Lemon... Mechanically Weak
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I must give Buxcom credit for replacing the balun which increased in VSWR after heating up and ruining the rg8x. They sent a heavier duty balun but stopped short of replacing the coax as it was hinted that parasitics might have caused the damage or that I was running RTTY. Neither turned out to be the case, my finals are neutralized nicely. The little balun never would tune up correctly on 80 meters, even before the coax meltdown, but now the new balun works fine. I was flabbergasted that the coax and balun were supported by a small gauge bare copper wire bent at a 90 degree angle and tinned. Can you imagine this baby breaking off in a wind... especially if you use RG8 which is what I went to when they wouldn't replace the coax and I had to do it on my dime. Electrically now with the high power balun and RG8 the thing works fantastic! My solution to the weak support was to remove the eyebolt going through the center of the insulator off which the bare small gauge wire was afixed and replace the eyebolt and copper wire with a 4 gauge copper wire throu the isulator and bent over and tinned to stop the insulator from sliding then putting a 10-24 stainless steel washer to prevent the plastic insulator from getting gauged by the tinned and folded over copper. I also made a loop above the insulator and tinned the folded over portion in which to hook my rather substantial polyester brown rope. Now this thing is working and hanging well. To tell you the truth after all the money I spent on new coax and the time to reinforce the new balun after I finally got it, I could have merely calculated the dimensions and bought a high power balun to start off with. It was a royal pain to take it down twice and raise it thrice.
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WB1AAT
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Rating: 2/5
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Aug 6, 2007 21:36
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Decent product - poor customer support
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Heavy construction. approx 14 ga wire with heavy PVC coating and heavy insulators and excellent construction. Definately not one for stealth or for weak trees due to combined wire/pvc size and weight but would certainly last for years and take a beating. Works very well on 80, 40, and 20 and OK on 15 using a tuner. Also pretty decent on 6M. Overall very promising.
I'm scoring it down because I coudlnt quite get the SWR to come down on 10M without the tuner despite my attempts to follow suggestions in manual as closely as possible and it was pretty deaf on 10 even with a tuner. Found customer support to be very unpleasant ranging from curt messages to read the manual again to one word responses and eventually failure to respond at all. I really tried to work with this guy to no avail. Not going to try to return it because I dont want the added hassle. Instead, just throw it in the closet as a back-up and try some other brands like RadioWavz and RadioWorks. A shame.
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K2VI
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Rating: 5/5
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May 24, 2007 11:31
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built to last a very very long time.
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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this ocf windom crushes my 80 meter dipole in short daytime signal reports as well as dx,It really shows a big difference with night time long haul communication,If you get one you will be so happy with this windom i bet you get one for the future.I did.
tony k2vi
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