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Reviews For: M2 432-6WL 70cm Yagi

Category: Antennas: VHF/UHF+ Directional (Yagi, quad, etc.)

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Review Summary For : M2 432-6WL 70cm Yagi
Reviews: 1MSRP: $285.99
Description:
A 70cm Yagi. with 21 elements on a 14 foot 6 inch boom. Covers 420 to 450 MHz with a gain of 18.04 dBi. Maximum power 1 kW.
Product is in production
More Info: https://www.m2inc.com/FG4326WL
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
VE4CY Rating: 2021-10-08
A great SSB/CW UHF Yagi Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is my first M2 beam. Overall, I've been pleased with it. I purchased it to replace a 19 element Cushcraft 70cm beam. The Cushcraft had no adjustments and I couldn't get the SWR down to an acceptable level.

The assembly is pretty straight forward. It took me about 1.5 hours. Quite a bit of time was spent measuring the elements. They don't just start with the long element at the reflector and then get shorter as you move to the directors. They get shorter, then longer then shorter again. I think only about three of the 21 elements were the same length. Many of them were within 1/16 of an inch of the other.

One bug I noted in the assembly process was the fact that some of the 3/16" elements were slightly thicker than 3/16". Because of this the plastic buttons that get slid over the elements to insulate them from the boom didn't fit. I found that warming the buttons with a heat gun softened them and allowed element to be inserted into the hole on the button.

In regards to tuning.. The thing worked 'out of the box'. I put it together and used the recommended 3.5 inch spacing for the driven element matching stubs. With no further adjustments, I had less than 1.6:1 across the band. Since I'm using mine horizontally for SSB and CW only, I tweaked it a bit and got the SWR down to 1.08:1 at 432.100 MHz. This did bump up the SWR at the 450 MHz end to 2:1. But, I use a vertical for FM repeater use, so this wasn't an issue.

I've only had mine up for a week and have been using it with an IC-9700. Performance wise it's doing a good job. I chat regularly with friends in a nearby city 30 miles away. My best DX so far is 281 miles.