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Reviews For: Gabil GRA-HA750B

Category: Antennas: HF Mobile & Accessories

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Review Summary For : Gabil GRA-HA750B
Reviews: 4MSRP: $150
Description:
?The GRA-750B mobile antenna is designed as wideband. It can be used on 7-30MHz/50MHz. ?It is for amateur use. Please transmit on the amateur bands. ?Very compact at 1.22m, yet covering all the main bands from 3-70MHz receive, and transmit on 7-30MHz and 50-54MHz continuous. ?The fold-over hinge is convenient for entering garages, parking structures, drive-thru's etc... without the need to remove the antenna. It eliminates troublesome antenna detachment when your car is parked in the garage. ?This product is 100% Made in Taiwan. We strive to provide you with the highest quality to meet our customers' needs.
Product is in production
More Info: https://www.gabilradio.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1241
KC3AJV Rating: 2023-03-07
Not sure what is up with this antenna Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this thing based on some favorable reviews mixed in with poor ones, on a well known site. I wish I could add to the favorable reviews bu I can't. At least not yet anyway.

When I got the thing the first thing I did was measure SWR with the antenna mounted on a tri-mag mount, sitting on the floor, inside a building. The SWR was great! For more details, search another site with a review around the timeframe of this one. That is where my good news ends. I then took the antenna out to my car, mounted and routed the coax of the tri-mag mount (not a trivial thing to do) and attached the antenna. I drove around happy as a clam hearing all kinds of stuff on 80, 40, 20, and even one small tx on 10! I got home and tried the hinge mechanism and things got bad. The knurled nut had a tighter grip on the threads than the antenna did on the bottom coil. The whole thing started to unscrew from the coil. Bummer. Things didn't get better. I stopped hearing as much, and unfortunately I didn't even get to try my own tx before this happened. After it happened, I did try to tx and the radio shut down for SWR. I should have measured SWR with the antenna on the car before I even turned the radio on. That is my fault - I'll never know what it was.
I emailed Gabil Radio and had some good talk with support. I was worried I had ruined the thing because it stopped listening and seemed to have high SWR, and when I took it off to fix the antenna unscrewing I measured the center pin to the threads of the PL-259 and it was a dead short. As it turns out (according to Gabil) that is the design of this antenna.
I put the antenna back on the car and measured SWR. Not a single band was below 1:8. Bummer. I emailed back and forth with Gabil and waited a few days to do anything else.
I decided to take the antenna back inside and re-measure SWR the same way I did initially. Dang, wouldn't you know it, it was back to 1:1.6ish on 40m-6m! What gives. Next I took it back out to the car, mounted it, and did more measurements. SWR was splendid shocked. I decided to ease into txing and used the built in SWR measurement of an IC-7000. SWR on 40m 20m and 10m was all in the red. I then ran a sweep from 40m-6m with a NanoVNA and the SWR was all over the place and bad bad bad. I was perplexed.
At this point I took the antenna off and wanted to smash it. Instead, I emailed Gabil again to ask if there were anything that would cause the antenna to have good SWR before trying to tx, and then bad SWR after. We'll see if I get more support. If not, I'll return it and try a replacement because I really would like to be one of the lucky ones who gets a good 750b antenna. Fingers crossed.
KB0TTL Rating: 2022-08-06
Receives fine. Mediocre at making contacts. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have seen the other reviews of this antenna and really wish I had read them before I bought this thing.

As for the PRO's: It is short enough to sit comfortably on top of my work truck using a tri-magnet mount base, and it holds fast at highway speeds. It is a somewhat descent receiving antenna on most of the bands. I have been able to make several contacts on this antenna and have actually used it successfully on a POTA activation on 40m. According to the meter reading on my radio, the matching coil at the bottom of the antenna provides a somewhat descent impedance match when I attempt to transmit.

Now for the CON's: I can hear people on all the bands, but have only been able to reach people on 40m (but even then, I have trouble reaching people over 600 miles away using my Yaesu FT-857D on 100W). It is also next to impossible to use the 40m band while traveling down the road due to high amounts of engine noise, so I can only talk on this thing while sitting still in a parking lot. While the matching coil at the base of the antenna appears to provide an OK impedance match on most of the bands, the same can be said of a dummy load. It is my feeling that this is actually a mediocre 40m whip being sold as a multi-band antenna.

The conclusion: It is better than nothing and provides some good listening while driving down the road. If I choose to stop at a state park and 40m is in good shape, I can attempt a POTA activation at my discretion. All the other "mobile HF" antennas I have tried have been more efficient and effective, including the inexpensive HamStick and Multi-Band jumper antennas. So far, this antenna fits the bill of being a "mobile antenna", however, it has some serious drawbacks as far as usability and practicality are concerned. I am tempted to experiment with inserting different lengths of stainless steel wire into the loading coil instead of the provided whip in order to see if it will tune to some of the higher frequency bands. My advice is to use a HamStick or at very least a multi-band jumper antenna instead of this.
AJ6VY Rating: 2021-05-16
Terrible SWR Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I measured this antenna on my nanoVNA. The results are below. The antenna does not live up to its label or description as the SWR on 40m and 30m is poor although it is reasonable on 20m to 6m and 70cm. I wish I could in good conscience sell it but I cannot.

Freq (MHz)--VSWR
3.21 ---------19.56
4.0-----------13.5
5.2-----------2.8
5.7-----------6.7
7.13----------4.67
7.72----------3.9
8.85----------1.78
9.41----------3.18
10.26---------2.62
14.2----------1.67
18.15---------1.5
21.82---------1.47
24.92---------1.5
28.59---------1.44
50.0----------1.2
53.0----------1.19
56.0----------1.23
144.0---------4.36
146.0---------5.23
148.0---------5.56
410.0---------1.72
420.0---------1.34
435.0---------1.48
445.0---------1.16
450.0---------1.38










K1TGO Rating: 2020-10-26
Don't waste your money Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Seems to be a Taiwanese knock-off of the Comet HA-750B, which is one of the worst products they ever made. It's easy enough to get low SWR on all bands, but that's it's only redeeming feature. The hinge feels like it won't take much to break, but it's main problem is that it's pretty much deaf. I heard a little on 40 and 80 meters, but absolutely zero on 20 meters (and this weekend was the CQ SSB contest, so there was lots to listen to). Oh, and yes, the mount is screwed directly into the body of the car, so ground is good. It went back to Amazon.