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Reviews For: JK Antennas JK205

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

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Review Summary For : JK Antennas JK205
Reviews: 1MSRP: $1,990.00 not including balun
Description:
This is a 5 element monoband yagi for 20 meters.
Product is in production
More Info: https://jkantennas.com/jk205.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
NS4X Rating: 2021-07-08
Amazing performance on 20 meters Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
This review will cover my experiences with the JK Antennas JK205 yagi, which is a 5-element monoband yagi covering 20 meters.
Quality
The quality of this antenna is superb. Very heavy-duty construction throughout with no evidence of “cheap” components. It has survived, intact, a moderate ice storm which kept the elements drooping for five days before the ice melted.
Construction-Installation
The first point I need to make is that this is a big antenna, with a boom length of 40 feet and longest element length of 37 feet. JK’s website lists the weight at 128 pounds. Take this into account when planning assembly of this antenna. It is not trivial to reposition once fully assembled. In my case, I chose to assemble the boom and the element channels on saw horses and then assemble each element half, but leave the element halves unattached until the boom assembly had been moved into place near the tower. I did this so that most of the assembly could be done inside a shop in the shade and with a nice concrete floor to catch dropped hardware. This worked very well for me, but you should decide if it is best for your situation. Otherwise, construction of this antenna is very straightforward since there are no coils, etc., just sections of aluminum tubing to be joined together. I found it helpful to use a caliper to verify the tubing diameters prior to bolting them together, but this is not essential as the taper is pretty obvious once you begin assembly of the elements. Stainless steel “hose” clamps are used to secure the element tips (bolts are used everywhere else). These are quality clamps, but it is fairly easy to strip them if you are too aggressive when tightening them. I would actually have preferred bolts to the hose clamps.

I hired a crane and a professional tower installer (K4ZA) to install this yagi at 87 feet on a 100-foot rotating Rohn 55g tower. The crane had 130 feet of “pick”, but the operator failed to account for the horizontal clearance needed by the elements, which meant that the elements could not clear the crane’s boom. We had to detach the ends of some of the elements on one side of the beam and reassemble them once the yagi was mounted on the tower.
Performance
On-air performance is amazing. Front to side is especially noticeable. During the most recent CQ WPX RTTY contest I had the beam pointed southeast, to the Caribbean (from my location). When rotating it to the northeast (toward Europe from my location) the increase in signal strength of signals that had not even been visible on the panadapter was remarkable. The antenna is perfect for DXing. For contesting it is excellent if you intend to work stations in the direction it is pointed. Its great front to side and front to back means that it is not the best if you are attempting to work stations to sides of the beam, but that is the way a yagi works. I am completely happy with the performance of this yagi.
Customer Service
Ken at JK Antennas is excellent, always happy to answer questions. I have nothing but positive impressions of the customer service I received.
Conclusion
If I had to do it over, I would order this antenna again. It is high quality and high performance. Assembly and installation are not trivial, but the performance is worth it.