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Reviews For: KIO Technology

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

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Review Summary For : KIO Technology
Reviews: 1MSRP:
Description:
Hex Beam
Product is in production
More Info:
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
KE7CHX Rating: 2022-01-04
Great antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Had this Hex Beam for Apx. a little over a year.
Started out with the main beam + 20m, then about four month later added 17 & 15, meter

,I built my own rooftop tower based on the designs of some others I’ve seen,

I attached a Yaesu 450 rotor and controller.

Originally I sit-up a heavy lawn awning stand ,stuck the 6’ mast I had in the stand and assembled the beam from that point,
before I moved the mast to the rooftop I checked the SWR tuning , all bands 20,17,15 were a flat 1.1 got to love it.

TIP: Before you mount your beam. Spray paint the whole antenna with rustoleum (black) otherwise the sun will destroy it. (Not your frequency wires)

Beam was easy to assemble took all of about an hour.

I’m 76 years old and did all the assembly & mounting by myself. Be assured I am no muscle man.
I had no problems.
Attached a rope to it pulled it up on the roof with no problem ,mount the beam mast in the tower first then mount the beam on the mast.
using KIO’s universal mount , to 2” x 6’ aluminum mast pipe.
I attached a 4’ piece of coax and re-checked the SWR still good 1.1
Attach my coax leading across the roof to my radio shack apx. 30’ away. Hooked up rotor cables to the controller.
Hooked my cable to the switches and then to the transmitter Yaesu FTdx10. Hit the switch and the beam sang like a bird and still does ever sense.

Now here’s some amazing things about this Hex Beam.
Believe it.
I can send & receive on 40meters with this beam just as if I had a 40 meter antenna but it don’t . The SWR 1.9 but for some reason with my external tuner it brings it down to 1.3 ,
can’t explain it I’m not an engineer. All I know is it works.
Now here’s something else about this antenna.
On October 5th. 2021 at 12:00am my house took a direct lighting hit during a storm. It killed my dummey load w/ meter, fried two other watt meters, my tv, my computer, and my other antenna a Diamond CP5 and coax plus a bunch of other things. Seems like grounding and ground wires didn’t matter. I’ve got three 10’ copper ground rods spaced 3’ apart and all the equipment was grounded plus all antennas were disconnected. I knew the storm was coming, I always disconnect when I’m aware of storms.

Of all things the lighting fried my Yeasu FTdx10, which I only had for about two weeks Pryor, this can be verified by Yeasu because I sent it in and they sent it back stating it was none repairable due to lighting damage. I had to replace it.
I had to replace the coax leading to the Hex Beam but the beam still works like a charm. No idea why , but it does.
I did have to replace the rotor and controller and controller cable.
So how’s that , KIO beam took a direct hit from the lighting and still is working. Amazing.
So based on the above story I give the KIO Technology HexBeam and there products 10 stars.
Leon H. Ritchie , KE7CHX