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Show all reviews of the Diamond D220 mobile discone antenna
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of the Diamond D220 mobile discone antenna.
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K6ATZ
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 14, 2012 16:29
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I liked this mobile discone so much, I put it on my tower.
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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The unfortunately named D220 is not designed for transmission on the 220 MHz band, but there is in fact an SWR dip between 222 and 225 that I find usable. Anyway I'm not going to hold that against this well-designed rugged little antenna, as all the specs and packaging clearly state - even for those of us who cannot read Japanese - that the D220 is designed to transmit on 2 meters and 70/33/23 centimeters. In fact, I like the results on all bands so much I even mounted this little mobile discone at the top of my tower!
In my installation the SWR is near 1.9:1 at 223.5 MHz, rising to 3:1 at the edges of the 222 - 225 range. I wouldn't risk my treasured Icom IC-375A on that, but I've found that some 220 MHz FM transceivers based on land mobile designs from Alinco and Jetstream can handle the D220 just fine without a tuner, and at that SWR I'm still getting from 75% to 90% ERP. The D220 has good SWR on the other ham bands in its range, and my receiver/scanner works well on the full 100 to 1600 MHz range of this antenna too.
I mounted the D220 atop my tower by sliding it into a short length of PVC pipe and hose-clamping the bottom end of the PVC to the top of the tower mast. This antenna weighs almost nothing, and disappears against the sky. I had the larger Diamond D-130J up there first, and that one does work more bands - including 28, 50 and 220 MHz - but the D-130J occupied more space than I could spare...and also it kinda looked like Sputnik was landing, hi hi.
Height matters, and even a J-Pole would work wonders at 40 or 50 feet, but the compact D220 is multiband and does provide some gain. I achieve full FM quieting and good D-STAR connections with no R2-D2 throughout most of the Bay Area, and I have made FM simplex contest contacts as far as the Sierra foothills 180 miles away with this little discone. If you squint you can just about see the D220 in pictures of my beam posted via www.k6atz.us
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Product is in production.
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