| K0KVR |
Rating:     |
2011-04-22 | |
| Performs well |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I just replaced my 40/80/160 meter multi-bland dipole and my 40/80/160 meters dipoles from Alpha Delta with this antenna to gain 30 meters and reduce the number of antennas I have hanging in my 100 x 100 foot lot. Right off the bat I was able to work Europe on 30 meters with good reports. I found the SWR was very high on several bands, but had not bolted the sloper to my aluminum tower. After doing that, adding a grounds to my front yard, and cutting 12 inches off the ends, I was able to reach a 1.5 to 1 SWR on 160 at 1.850MHZ, a 1.0 to 1.0 on 7.200 MHZ, and a 1.5 to 1 on the center of 30 meters. On 80 meters, I am still at 3 to 1, the minimum at 3.750 MHZ. I probably will not be on 80 much, but may need to add a stub since I noticed a much lower SWR up around 3.85 MHZ. I mounted the sloper about 4 feet below my TA33M WARC and it slopes over my roof peak to about 12 feet above the ground. I also have aluminum siding which I am sure plays into the picture. All in all it will do the job for me. |
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| N0AH |
Rating:     |
2010-01-22 | |
| Raising end from ground level BIG Improvement |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I raised the end of the sloper from around 6 feet off the ground to 14 feet. My SWR on 160M is now resonant at 2.1:1 at 1.825, down significantly. And now has a usable bandwidth on topband without a tuner of around 30KHz. 80M also improved dropping down to 1.8:1. 30 and 40M resonant points rose a bit but still usable without a tuner, although I'll still be using the tuner for most QSO's. It is just a lot less sensitive on usable bandwidth when tuned up. I worked two JA's at sunrise this morning on 80M with it. A big improvement on just working stateside.
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Earlier 5-star review posted by N0AH on 2009-12-27
I am always a bit leary of advertisor claims. But for the money, and just for the manual, this is money well spent.
I am in a limited space as far as 160M goes. Typical suburban back yard. Feel free to visit QRZ.COM under my call sign for more of the site location description.
I located the antenna per the manual's recommendations. I have a 20 foot Glen Martin tower with a tri-bander on the top at 50 feet from ground to bottom. I located the antenna apprx. 12 feet under this antenna.
My antenna analyzer showed, without a tuner, at least a 3.5:1 match on all bands, 30, 40, 80M at resonance and a 5.5:1 match on 160M. To improve this, I ran a long radial from my Cushcraft 80/40V vertical radial field (18 radials going out 90 degrees from my fence corner) to the ground rods of the tower.
This was a dramatic improvement seen on the lowest bands. 30M actually got a bit worse with a higher resonant point and a slightly higher match. 40M, with my lowest resonance point with out the tuner, went up 200KHz but was usable at 2.8:1 at 7.300MHz. I dropped to 3:1 on 80M with the resonant point jumping up 100KHz to 3.800MHz. Sort of usable but needs a tuner on this band.......
On 160M, my lowest resonant point dropped from 1.990MHz at 5.5:1 all the way down to 3.8:1 at a lower resonant point of 1.830MHz. Cool beans!
With my Dentron MT-2000A Tuner, I can get a flat match anywhere. Before attaching the radial field, I struggled a bit on 160M to get down to 2:1 to 1 at resonance. It just goes soooo flat with the radial field attached any where on 160M now-
All of these suggestions on tuning are in the manual. It explains 1/4 sloper theory very well and I was glad I spent two hours in zero degree icy weather getting that radial attached to the tower's ground rods.
My weak point on the antenna is most likely a less than desirable ground return path from the base of the tower on the roof to ground. It is 10 AWG solid copper wire. It meets code but it is not like having a tower sticking in the dirt-
In the Stew Perry 2009 contest, I worked the first two hours after sundown, an hour around bedtime, and an hour before sunrise. In about four hours, I made 68 QSO's in 30 states and three VE provences. I did not notice any direction after mapping out the grids but had a number of QSO's in AZ, CO, WY and NM. Only a few in TX and this was a bit of a surprise. But so was working WA, VA, GA, OR, and VE3....where was all of these EU ops, hi-
From Denver, I worked VE7, VE6 and VE3. I worked the majority of QSO's under 1,500KM but had several over 2,000KM with my longest being 3 at 2,562KM to the east. My longest north was 1,671 KM and to the NW in CN87 at 1,767 KM.
The antenna is fairly quiet but I was running my IC-Pro III with the ATT set at 6-12 dB on most contacts. Without it, my noise level was around S-7 and a lot of distant east coast signals were in the noise. That said, my opinion is that it is very quiet compared to my since retired Inv L at my WY QTH.
All in all, I was pleased with the antenna on 160M and that is why I bought it. But I was working a lot of contest stations with excellent receive antennas so I can't claim I could talk to another one of these antennas on the east coast. I took the time to look up each station worked on QRZ.COM and several had big time 160M stations.
30 and 40M play well on DX around the world thus far. The antenna is around 1-2 S-units down vs the 30M dipole at 40 feet and 1-3 S-units down on 40M versus the Cushcraft 80/40V. But it is making a lot of Q's on these two bands.
80M is a lot like 160M for me. Good up to great stateside ability for what it is. The antenna has a low profile and took 30 minutes from out of the package to installation, excluding my radial attachment, hi.
If I could have more stations in this contest on 160M respond to my attempts to run a frequency, I'd give it a Great Plus rating. But it is what it is and that said, I really love this wire! |
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| VE7HJ |
Rating:      |
2010-01-05 | |
| Alternate Installation |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I bought the DX-B single wire sloper to mount on my tower. I decided to bring it along on our winter vacation to Princeton BC. I hung it upside down from a tree at 35 feet and sloped it to about 9 feet at the low end. I tied it off and ran a 67 foot counter poise wire
that was at 2 feet off the ground on the low end. My coax feed point was at the low end
just to be clear. It would be the reverse of the tower installation.
I worked all kinds of Eastern North America stations on 80 meters, 160 would not tune but it sure did hear well. I have never heard so many signals on 160. 30 and 40 meters worked equally as well. The antenna favored the direction of the low end of the wire.
My reason for trying this is to convince other hams who do not have a tower to try hanging it off a tree and keep the feed point at the low end. If you keep the counterpoise connection at 9-12 feet and the low end off the ground you could get away with 1-2 wires on the lowest band.
I will write another review once its mounted on my tower.
73 VE7HJ
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| NG9R |
Rating:     |
2009-11-11 | |
| beats a low dipole |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I bought a DX-B a couple of years ago with the intentions of mounting it up in a tree and running multiple ground wires down the tree to ground rods, but it never happened that way. I put it up as a ground mounted vertical in an inverted-L configuration and it works very well. I used a short 4 foot ground rod and 16 wires of various lengths, from 16 feet to 135 feet. The vertical part is suspended from a tree to 35 feet and then it runs parallel to the ground, in inverted-L fashion. It is very narrow on 80 and 160, but performance beats a 45 foot high dipole hands down on paths longer than 500 miles. I did notice that adding a length to the end to lower the SWR on 160 caused the resonance point on 80 to change as well. A tuner is a must on 160 and 80 if your want to operate CW and phone. |
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| KC8JNL |
Rating:      |
2008-10-27 | |
| effective for limited space |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I just installed this antenna on a 40 ft. tower at 36 ft. I do and planned on using a tuner as I do not have a beam on top to act as a capacity hat. called don at alpha delta, put in some radials and an effective ground - it works well for my local. I am in michigan in a poor location with sandy soil. 160 meter op. has netted 2-3-4- and 5 call areas with 20 to 100 watts out the first night I am pleased. 73. |
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| N8WUG |
Rating:     |
2007-11-04 | |
| Good Short Sloper! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Setup was easy, tuning required a little thought.
Height - is 30ft sloping to 10ft mounted under a 3-ele. Yagi w/ 1 ground rod. 40M required a 2ft tuning stub installed at the base of the 80M coil, (1.0 SWR +-200khz.) Cut the 30M for 20M, 1.3 SWR entire band. 80M shortened 18in, 2.6 SWR +-100khz. 160M shortened 9in, 1.1 SWR +-50khz. 17M has 1.5 SWR +-100khz. 10M band is less than 2.7 SWR +- 1mhz.
Antenna resonates well and have had good reports for a 1/4 wave sloper! PS: I am working on lowering the 80M SWR. |
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| PY2ONU |
Rating:      |
2007-08-16 | |
| great! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I bought this antenns in last mounth in USA, this antenna is working very very good in my shack.
In 30, 40 and 80 meters very good - the same work a wire dipole (big size) - BUT THIS ANTENNA HAVE ONE 18 METERS!
160 meters good (less that normal wire dipole). The normal dipole signal is 9+ 10 Db. with alpha delta DX-B signal 7-9 Db.
But The normal dipole = 80 meters wire, alpha delta DX-B only 18!
ATTENTION: 2 things is VERY VERY necessary to this antenna worked correct:
- GROUND
- GOOD ANTENA TUNNER
I like this antenna a lot, i'm very happy with may Alpha Deltha DX-B!
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| N8BHB |
Rating:      |
2007-02-24 | |
| Works for Me |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
This is my second Alpha Delta antenna, the first is a DX-LB I purchased a year ago. The DX-B is installed at right angle to DX-LB.
The DX-B is well constructed and works as advertised provided you follow the instructions--check their website for tips on slopers. A tuner is also helpful.
Mine is mounted at 35 feet on crank-up tower and drops to about 10 feet at the other end. I ran a ground wire from the antenna on the tower to an 8 foot copper-plated ground rod and then continued it to make a 1/4 wave radial for 160m. at ground level, bending it around as necessary to conform to my somewhat small lot.
84/40m performance equals or exceeds the DX-LB dipole, which is mounted at 30 feet. DX-B the only one of the two wires that loads reliably on 160m--could never get the DX-LB to work on that band, even with a tuner.
Somewhat pricey, but worth it! |
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| JDEVARIE |
Rating:     |
2007-02-04 | |
| OK |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I just got this antenna from HRO based on the documentation at the store at the time. I have a small city lot of space available and the only thing I had been using was a 20m dipole hung on one of the fences in my yard. I wanted to get on 80m and thought this antenna would do, a little pricey but I thought it would do.
I read the instructions and was a little disappointed to find out the need of a capacity hat of some sort to make it work, regardless, I gave it a try since there were instructions to use without a tower.
I attached the feed point at about 22ft high agains one of the walls of my house and the end is at about 10ft in one of the corners of my yard. I attached a return wire as instructed in the manual and straight down into a burried copper ground rod. Using my MFJ269 analyzer, here are the results I got with this configuration:
160m-- Got a match of 1.4:1 at 1.866 with about 70khz of bandwith at this swr, I shortened it a bit (about a foot and a half) to get it to 1.972Mhz.
80m--3.755 @ 2.6:1 with 100Khz of bandwith
30m-- all band with 2:1 or less
40m-- could not get anything below 4.5:1
20m-- could not get anything below 8.5:1
15m,10m-- these bands were all at about 6:1
I also tried WARC bands and as expected all were way off.
Based on the instructions, I guess this was expected. My house has a steel roof and I was hoping it could serve as a somewhat makeshift hat to the antenna, maybe it is maybe it is not.
I then plugged my old tuner, an AT-200 from Kenwood and was able to tune most of the bands with the exception of 160m which was un-tunable. I am sure I could do better with a different tuner.
Anyways, based on the instructions, this antenna is working as expected. It is stealth enough and I am able to get on 80m as I wanted. It is, I think, a little over-priced but its construction is solid and in my opinion bullet proof. Easy to set up and end fed.
I have made several contacts with it so far and my SG2020 running 20w and my TS820S @ 100w.
I hope this post helps someone else. |
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| KJ6QB |
Rating:      |
2006-12-27 | |
| Great Antenna |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| This is my second Alpha Delta wire antenna. I also have the DX-EE installed as an inverted Vee and they both are great. Nice rugged construction. If you are having a problem with the DX-B, then you have not followed the manufacturers installation instructions. This antenna requires a capacitance Hat and a counterpoise to perform to specifications. I have mine up 50 feet at the feedpoint. I am using a multi-band ground plane scanner antenna that is mounted approximately 6' above the feedpoint to act as a capacitance hat. I ran a counter poise from the feedpoint all the way down to a separate grounding rod at the base of my 50' mast. The terminating end is at about 10' off the ground. The antenna works GREAT! I can use 160 (1.845-1.875) without a tuner and the match is flat. It works great all across 160 with a good tuner. The performance on 75/80m is also great. It is optimized by using a good L-Network tuner (I use a Ten-Tec Model 238B). Overall a great antenna as long as it is installed correctly! |
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