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Reviews For: MCR666 - 7 BAND COBWEB ANTENNA FROM 4 TO 20 METERS

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : MCR666 - 7 BAND COBWEB ANTENNA FROM 4 TO 20 METERS
Reviews: 3MSRP: £189
Description:
COMPLETE 7 BAND HF COBWEB BASE ANTENNA FOR 4-6-10-12-15-17-20 METERs
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mcr666.com/sales1/ham-radio/4-meter-70-meg-base-vertical-antenna/cobwebb-antenna/7-band-cobweb-antenna/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0033
M0JFG Rating: 2021-07-22
It works! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Bought it for my birthday present and put it up today. Really enjoyed constructing it and have put it up maybe 25ft up over an extension, took a few hours for 1 person. Typically the pre-cut wires resonated on the low side with wire folding needing another 2.5 cm per band. Easily getting 17,000 km on WSPR.
So it works, and it was easy to tune. BUT my score drops as the final solution looks a bit agricultural. I would have appreciated thinner more covert wires. I might add a central support to hold up the arms better. Maybe with some weathering the antenna will look a bit more covert.
I will do an update in a few months.
I used a nanoVNA for tuning and my icon 756pro2.

Owned now for 2 days. Tuned it on most bands for WSPR, took 2 hours in the dry. The problem is when it rains the resonances can change quite a bit. Thinking does it need to be higher. Connector is heat shrinked so dry. http://wsprnet.org/olddb?mode=html&band=all&limit=50&findcall=&findreporter=M0JFG_KIWI&sort=distance

After a few days or rain then sun I thought go back to my 1/4 wave vertical.

But now a month later its always sunny, I have all digital bands nicely tuned and its staying tuned. Easily receiving Australia on 20m WSPR. I have my KIWI SDR watching 5 bands simultaneously - nice.
WV9L Rating: 2017-05-27
Not a bad antenna but only works on 5 bands Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought one of these. I assembled in the shop and then installed up on my rohn 25 tower at 45'. I used an antenna analyzer to make final adjustments on all bands. However, when trying to tune 6 meters, i couldnt find a resonance on the band. It had a 1.7swr at 48.5mhz. I adjusted and played with it for hours and never could get it to tune. No adjustment i made, changed the resonance. I swept the antenna from 14mhz to 60mhz. The other bands were great, but 6 what nowhere. I contacted the seller. the wires are like lamp chord or speaker wire (2 seperate conductors). The seller told me to strip the ends on each side and short them together. I tried, not seeing what that would do, but at that point inwas willing to try amything. After all, id bought it since it was advertised as having the 6th band, that the MFJ's didnt. Nothing ever worked. I ohmed out the wires, and even opened the matching box to make sure they were connected.I got so frustrated, i finally cut the 6m wires off completely. Guess what? I swept it, and still had that resonance at 48.5mhz. So, long stort short, buy if your willing to accept it as a 5 band, but at that point the MFJ model is cheaper. After 4mo, with running the 100w of my Flex 6500, the swr went high. I opened matching box to find the RG-58 choke inside was burnt up. So, i had to take down and rebuild. So, i gutted it all, went to a balun feed and single wires. Problem solved. In the long run i wish id bought the MFJ from the start. But, the fundamentals of the cobwebb are great. Very compact. Just dont buy this one.
GW4DVB Rating: 2017-02-02
Works OK - But does not want to tune on all bands !!! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this antenna from MCR666.com over a month ago – The antenna was delivered in good time. On opening it I found that one of the fiberglass legs was damaged. No problem Mark dispatched a ‘Repair Kit’ and I was soon able to get the aerial constructed. I can honestly say that tuning the antenna was / is the most time consuming and fiddly job I have ever experienced. After nearly two days of following the instructions I have had to give in to a compromise on the 10, 6 and 4 meter bands where the antenna fails to tune / resonate in band and I have to use an auto ATU to bring the SWR down. Performance wise it works very well on the bands that it matches properly on. Would I recommend the MCR666.com cobweb – yes it is compact and seems to work very well with lots of contacts across the world. However the construction and tuning (in my experience) is not for the feint hearted and near-on impossible !!