| NN1F |
Rating:  |
2006-01-02 | |
| Works better than expected |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Installed the antenna along the rear of the house under the eves in a Inverted V. Spent the weekend testing it between my ground mounted vertical. Was quite suprised to see that it acutally heard better than the vertical. I find myself using this antenna more than the Vertical. The wife likes it because she cannot see it as she could with the other dipole unning along the house and over the yard.
|
|
| N5IVZ |
Rating: |
2005-08-17 | |
| Good buy |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| Been using the antenna in an inverted vee attached midway up my r 5 for support! has worked great.. working all low power and pulling in the dx.. have antenna in the back of the house above our fence where neighbors can not see it..highly recommend. |
|
| KB1IKD |
Rating: |
2004-10-20 | |
| DX Performance |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I have worked over 120 DXCC and 47 WAS locations 50 - 100W digital modes (more than 3000 QSOs)using this antenna. 15M and 20M works FB into the US mid west (MI, WI, SD), the South (FL, TX, PR), the Carribean, South America, and Europe. Contacts made in Japan, Africa, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, Alaska and Antartica have been very weak and hard to complete. This may be a function of my low antenna height (25 Ft) rather than the antenna design.
For me, this antenna hears better than it speaks, stations that I can copy weakly sometimes cannot hear or copy my signals.
Canadian contacts have also not been strong, but this may be a function of the close distance and my wires being strung E to W in direction.
ME, VT, and CT have been impossible to work due to their close proximity to NH, I see the DX side of QSOs, but not the response transmissions from New England.
I have no experiences with other antennas to compare the DX-EE performance to except a generic 20M "ham stick" dipole at 15 ft. The DX-EE beats the lower shorter "ham stick" dipole by about 2 S units.
HTH de KB1IKD |
|
| WD9HDM |
Rating: |
2004-10-20 | |
| Great Antenna |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
This is a great little antenna - perfect for limited space needs - such as attic installation.
Remember to ensure the dipole legs are separated as much as possible (90 degrees or more) - installed as a flattop if possible.
Forget a balun. Alpha Delta claims the antenna is designed to be used without one and my experience is that you will lose more than gain by using a balun.
A tuner is good for work on other bands.
Great customer service from Alpha Delta Communications - even if you just have questions. |
|
| W0PPK |
Rating: |
2004-10-17 | |
| Still Excellent |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| Still going strong after close to 3 years. No problems. Reports as good as the first day! |
|
| NJ3A |
Rating: |
2004-10-13 | |
| Excellent Attic Performer |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| I purchased the Alpha Delta DX-EE specifically because it would fit in my attic space and give my Icom 756 ProII enough bands to keep me happy. The performance is excellent, even with it being behind the shield of the roof etc. The antenna does take some time to assemble it correctly and this is a step that you should not take short cuts on. Work on one side at a time and you'll end up with a great performer. Materials are superior quality, hard wire will take lots of power, but you don't need it as this antenna tunes fine and has great reception as well. I managed to install this antenna from one corner diagonally to the center roof peak and down to the other corner. It's sort of an inverted "V", but just barely. Our local nets on 15 usually have a number of barely heard stations, fortunately I'm not one of them because of the Alpha Delta DX-EE.. |
|
| AE7Q |
Rating: |
2004-07-13 | |
| Ugly is beautiful (especially in the attic) |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Plan on about four hours to uncoil & lay out the stiff 12g solid copper wires (inside where it's warm), and then thread & secure the 10m & 15m band wires through the standoffs.
Then, loosely coil the antenna into a bucket, and crawl up into the attic with pliers, coax, & several eye-bolts, and breathe insulation dust for another four hours (my attic, not the fault of Alpha-Delta).
When you are done you will have an excellent-performing antenna that (with an MFJ-902 tuner) tunes 1:1 on 60m thru 10m.
|
|
| IK5WQO |
Rating: |
2004-06-25 | |
| Outstanding !!! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Hello, i am using an Alpha Delta DX-EE as attic mounted antenna, and it works perfectly !
I suggest this antenna to everyone, it will let you work on 10-15-20-40.
First suggestion : add a 1:1 balun (Alpha Delta, why don't you sell your DX-EE with a balun ???)
Second suggestion : never cut your antenna, just wrap wires (i cut to tune, and i made a mistake)
|
|
| AL1Z |
Rating: |
2004-02-20 | |
| Works Great |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I have this antenna mounted in my attic, in a slightly inverted-V configuration. We have a 2-story house, and so the overall height above ground for the DX-EE is probably about 30-35ft. It's fed with 75ft of RG-213 coax.
This antenna was purchased as an alternate to my (outside mounted) MA6V Cushcraft vertical. The MA6V is affected by moisture loading (see my review under the MA5V category) and I needed something for those wet days. [I was unable to install the DX-EE outside due to several other concerns, including power-line location, neighbor's visibility, and so forth.]
It is interesting though that on dry days I've compared signal strengths between the two, and find that in many cases the DX-EE outperforms the vertical. Of course there are going to be several other variables in that comparison equation (eg. horizontal vs. vertical polarization, etc), but the point is that I have been very pleasantly surprised by the many DX contacts I've made (S. America, Japan, etc) using just 100 watts into an attic mounted dipole. I can only guess that if this antenna was mounted outside in the clear it would perform even better.
The quality of materials is great, and assembly and installation was easy. I would recommend of course that an analyzer be used to fine tune the antenna, as every location will have unique features that might have an impact on the default measurements provided in the owners installation guide.
Some other post's have mentioned the cosmetic appearance of the installed antenna. Being attic mounted that is of no concern to me, but I can see where it might be an issue with some folks for outside, visible installations. The insulated 20/40m wire does, even with good stretching, still have some slightly kinked (or bent) spots to it. And it's very difficult to tension the 10/15m wires with the stand-off spreaders so that the wire is perfectly straight. But that's going to be the trade off for this multi-band dipole. For me, it's still a 5-rating.
Patrick
AL1Z |
|
| W2IRT |
Rating: |
2004-01-15 | |
| DX-EE for DXCC and beyond! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I bought my DX-EE in October 2001 to replace a full-size 40M dipole on top of a 3-story apartment building in Queens, New York. I wanted 10 and 20 meter capabilities in addition to 15 and 40, and I needed something small and unobtrusive.
Once I got over the stiff wire issues, it was easy to string up between vent pipes emenating from the roof's surface. It now sits just about eye-level atop the building and more or less a clear shot to the east, north and south, with the antenna running 001/181 Magnetic. With 100W fed through now-2-year-old RG-8X, I couldn't be happier. Using this antenna and my modest Kenwood TS-570D my totals now stand at 241 worked, 230 confirmed and well on my way to a 5-band DXCC (a full-size home built 80M dipole completes my antenna arangement). I just made WAZ and WAS on at least three bands and I always do reasonably well in contests for a 35' wire antenna and only 100W. I do plan to get a small amplifier this year (600W) that hopefully will help just a tad.
I was surprised that my signal off the broad-side was weaker than expected (090-270), but to the northeast and southwest it positively rocks. Huge signals to and from western, central and eastern Europe, good performance to the South Pacific and VK/ZL when the bands are open and never really a problem to central and west Africa. Virtually nothing over the poles or into southeast Asia, but so it goes given the antenna's orientation.
Of course I can't compete with the triband yagi and 800W my neighbour uses, but for what it is, I couldn't be happier. Incidentally, it tunes well on 17 and 12 with the internal ATU on the 570, but performance is somewhat degraded. Of course, I also get about a 3 S-unit improvement on 10 Metres using the 80M dipole, but again, that's to be expected.
73 and See You In The Pileups!
Peter, W2IRT |
|
