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Reviews For: Greyline Performance DXF Flagpole Verticals

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : Greyline Performance DXF Flagpole Verticals
Reviews: 23MSRP: 800 - 1,000
Description:
Greyline's DX Flagpole Antenna for 160-6M. No Radials, No guy wires. This HF vertical is HOA and XYL approved. Low angle for Real DX. Low loss and Low noise is high-performance. Sizes: 12-16-20-24-28 foot and taller available. Wind rated up to 155+ MPH without Flag, 95+MPH with Flag. Ham Radio is fun again
Product is in production
More Info: http://Greylineperformance.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
24234.1
W3PG Rating: 2020-05-06
Doesn't work as advertised. Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I put the 20ft DX flagpole antenna up in Feb 2020. I could never get it to work on 80, 15 or 10. Replaced every part and still would not work. Jon Kimball with Greyline Performance finally gave up and said there was nothing more to try. He said he would refund my money just send it back. I sent it back and never got any money! I would not recommend this antenna.
KF9BD Rating: 2019-06-15
Works very well for a short non-radial HF vertical. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is my review of the Greyline Performance 20 foot flagpole antenna. I purchased this antenna because I live in an HOA controlled area and on a small lot. There is no space for radials. I presently use a dipole in the attic. The expectation for the antenna is that it will provide a "better" solution than my present attic dipole. The review is in two parts. Part 1 is a review of the antenna assembly and performance. Part 2 deals with the purchase and delivery of the antenna.

Part 1: Performance Rating: 5 out of 5

The antenna is reasonably easy to assembly. The instructions are clearly written. The Al that the antenna is made of is of good quality. Wall thickness averages 2 mm on the upper sections and double wall construction averages 4 mm on the lower sections.

One small issue occurred while trying to feed the ladderline through the Al tubing section 100002. The plastic spacers were a little to large in diameter to slide through the Al tube section. I had to sand the outer diameter of each plastic spacer until they would slide through the Al tubing.

A second issue was that the antenna kit didn't contain the listed tube of Noalax grease. This grease is to be used at each joint of the Al to Al sections to reduce the occurance of corrosion. This was not a great problem in that Noalax is relatively cheap and readily available.

Initial assembly took about 1 hour. After having assembled the antenna once, the next time I assembled the antenna it took approximately 15 minutes.

The testing was performed in the following conditions:

* Between 0800 and 0930 PST
* Lacey, WA
* Antenna was temporarily attached to a fence, approximately 15 feet from a two story house
* Tuner: SGC 237 at feed point
* Palmer choke (provided with the antenna) attached between tuner and radio
* Radio: Yaesu FT 857D with MFJ swr meter
* Power: Bioenno Lifepo battery

The tuner was able to achieve an SWR of less than 2.0:1 across all bands ( six meters thru 80 meters) with the following exceptions. 50.100 was 3.5, however, 52.000 and above was <1.7. 10.100 was 2.0, however, 10.120 and above was <1.7.

Reception and signal reports were compared to my attic dipole. The flagpole antenna reception and transmision performance was significantly better than the attic dipole across all bands. I was able to hear signals on the flagpole antenna that I could not hear on the attic dipole. I was also able to make contacts using the flagpole antenna where with the attic dipole I could not make the contact. For those contacts that were able to be made with both antennes, the flagpole was consistently 2 s units or more stronger.

This antenna has satisfied my intent of accquiring a small foot print antenna with better performance than my attic dipole, that was also acceptable within my HOA environment.

Part 2: Performance Rating: 3 out of 5

Dealing with Greyline Performance requires a bit of faith in mankind and patience. They have a business practice of immediately charging your credit card upon initiating the purchase online. This would not be a problem except for the significant delay in shipment of the product. They do indicate in on their website that they try to complete orders and ship within 3 weeks. They also indicate that in some instances the shipment goes out within days. This leads one to assume that the shipment will be sooner rather than later. That assumption was not valid. After receiving an email confirming my purchase, which happen the day of purchase, there was no shipment notice for the next couple weeks. At approximately 2 weeks I contacted Greyline to determine what was happening. They indicated the shipment would be made soon, offering that things were busy. I waited another week, nothing. I contacted Greyline and they indicated they were at the Ham Convention and would ship when they got back, in a couple days. I did receive a UPS shipment prep notice the next day. However, a couple more days when by and no shipment had been picked up by UPS. I again contacted Greyline and they indicated they would be in my area in the next day or so and would bring the antenna with them. I met with the Greyline fellow a day or so later and picked up my antenna.

Bottomline: Greyline Performance does provide a good product. At least one that met my needs. Albeit, their practice of immediately charging ones' credit card while not actually being able to delivery the product in a timely manner is does leave one questioning whether to do business with them. I believe the Greyline Performance folks are honest and I would buy from them again.




K3WA Rating: 2019-05-10
A solution for a stealth HF antenna Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
My XYL and I realized it was time to downsize last summer. We relocated to North Carolina in January 2019 to a smaller home on a golf course in an antenna restricted HOA community. It was hard to leave a QTH with a couple of towers, low band transmit and receiving antennas for a tiny lot with antenna restrictions. Restrictions means no antenna allowed in English.

I wasn't ready to give up my ham radio, DX, and contesting additions. After searching around I found there were very few reasonable solutions. The one solution that stood out was the 20 foot flagpole antenna from Greyline Performance Antennas. So I bought one.

Jon Kimball KL2A at Greyline Performance Antennas, was very helpful throughout this process, answered all my questions, provided some needed advice, and was a large part of the reason I bought this antenna.

Fortunately, our HOA does allow flagpoles but limits them to 20 ft. The longest pole in the tent was doing the paperwork to get permission to put up the flagpole. That took a month and a half. The next hardest part was digging a hole for the flagpole and a trench to bury the coax into the house so no traces of antenna connection was visible. Putting the antenna together was a matter of a couple of hours, going slow to ensure I didn't mess it up. But up it went on 9 May, yesterday.

It is a pleasure to be on the air again. There's no magic here. The flagpole antenna does not compare to the tower abd beams at my last QTH. But I am on the air again. And that is priceless.

Running 100 watts yesterday and today enabled me to work a bunch of Europeans and South Americans on 20 and 40 meters with 100 watts. That's what I wanted and expected and that's what I got. I'm a happy ham.

I use the antenna with a LDG RT-600 remote tuner hidden ajacent to the flagpole. The antenna tunes easily on 80 through 6 meters. So far I am operating low power. I still need to run some AC to put my amplifier on line which will make a big difference. In the mean time, I am enjoying being on the air again.

Would I choose to downsize if I had a chance to do it over? Nope. Would I buy a flagpole antenna from Greyline Performance Antennas. Absolutely.