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Reviews For: EAntennas 30MDY1 Rotary Dipole

Category: Antennas: HF: Yagi, Quad, Rotary dipole, LPDA

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Review Summary For : EAntennas 30MDY1 Rotary Dipole
Reviews: 1MSRP:
Description:
30mtr rotary dipole 9.1m long
Product is in production
More Info: http://eantennas.es
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0012
G0CGL Rating: 2015-11-02
Disappointing Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
There are several commercial 30m dipoles. My first choice was the Optibeam OB1-30. However it is not possible to buy from their 'dealers', you have to get it direct from Optibeam Germany. They wanted 125 euro shipping. The EAntennas dipole, of similar weight and size, was 35 euro shipping from Wimo Germany.

So with Optibeam pricing themselves out of the market I tried DX-Beam of France. Their web site does not allow on-line ordering without completing a 'quote-request' web form. I duly placed my order via this form and got an automated reply showing it had been received. I heard nothing more.

So I decided to go with EAntennas from Wimo. This has turned into probably my biggest mistake in buying a ham radio antenna product since I was licensed in 1985. A summary of the shortcomings:

1 The packing is dreadful. Wimo clearly knew this and packed the EAntennas box inside one of their own. Just as well because on opening I was faced with numerous loose bolts, nuts, washers and other parts.

2 The parts supplied did not match the parts list. I later found out that the parts list is wrong.

3 There were no written instructions. There was an A4 sheet of text but this was only in Spanish. There was a page of diagrams. They looked like drawings of Lego blocks and bore no resemblance to antenna parts at all. Some of these had dual language labels but many (the important ones) were labelled in Spanish only. Why no photos?

4 There were 8 serious machining errors that were so bad that I had to take some parts of the antenna to a local machine shop for corrective measures.

5 Support from EAntennas is abysmal. My first emailed request for help resulted in being told to look at the first diagram. This is of the 10 metre long antenna compressed into less that the width of an A4 sheet. It was impossible to decipher. I got a little more help from another email but no reply at all to yet another request for help. I was then promised a PDF of written instructions but that never came.

6 Some parts are not shown at all so a lot of guesswork is involved. I had parts left over - I still don't know what they are for. I asked but was not told.

7 Anti-corrosion compound and weather proofing for the feed point are both not supplied.

8 There is no tuning adjustment information at all. By trial and error, I found that a change of 1cm each end (2cm total) makes a 12.5khz difference. Is it beyond them to tell the buyer this beforehand? I asked for the tuning adjustment information, but again I was not told.

I should have returned it to Wimo but because I had paid out to the machine shop for all the work they did to it, I thought I would make the best of it. I put construction on hold pending that PDF of instructions but after a week of waiting I gave up on EA7JX and got it constructed with the help of a non-ham translator. With time lost on thinking I had missing parts, waiting on email support that never came, going to the machine shop, lots of head scratching, and hit and miss tuning adjustments, it took a long time. For heaven's sake. A Stepp-IR 3 element took a fraction of the time and was a lot easier.

For performance analysis, I can compare it to my existing 30m antenna which is a Carolina Windom. Most received signals are 0 to 2 S-points better on the 30MDY1. It is certainly an advantage having directivity. On transmit there is a failing which I think is due to poor design. There is a peculiar feeding arrangement that uses a long thin balun (I guess its just coax through ferrite beads) and thin flexible leads instead of substantial wires. There is no way to stop this dangling about and there is interaction between it and the metalwork of the stub mast. Therefore SWR varies while transmitting from 1.10:1 to 1.40:1. That may or may not adversely affect it. In all liklihood this antenna, the Optibeam and the DX-Beam dipole (if you can get one) all perform equally well. In all honesty I have to say avoid the EAntennas 30MDY1 and select one of the others.