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Reviews For: Alfa-SPID rotor

Category: Antenna Rotators & Accessories

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Review Summary For : Alfa-SPID rotor
Reviews: 53MSRP: 1055
Description:
ALFASPID rotors are of a high quality with Torque to spare. They are custom made to withstand harsh conditions.

Product is in production
More Info: http://www.alfaradio.ca/alfaspid.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00534.1
VE6WQ Rating: 2003-09-29
A super rotor at a great price Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have now had the rotor up for over one year and the performance has been excellent through extreme cold during the winter and several very windy storms. It is turning a Mosely Classic 36 which is quite a heavy antenna. Rotor speed is great, the presets are very useful and the ability to rotate through North is very useful - I can go from Europe to Japan without having to spin the antenna all the way around. All in all a great rotor
SM6FYQ Rating: 2003-09-16
Excellent workmanship! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is the way a rotator system shall be designed. The AlfaSpid is a masterpiece, the result of combined excellent engineering from Poland and Canada. Very robust to withstand icing, storm winds and temperatures down to -40 deg C. Simplicity is the key for success here; the direction indication consists of a simple switch closures, one closing (pulse) per degree turn angle. Forget those old potentiometers giving bad spots after a while.

But great engineering doesn't stop here. The control box (125x38x220 mm WxHxD) contains bright green LED's for direction indication. As there are no physical stops in the rotator, true north or any other known direction is easily calibrated afterwards from ground. Independent of whatever random direction was achieved when the rotator and antenna mast bolts were tightened. I use the big radio/TV broadcast tower here in the Goteborg area at 157 deg bearing from my house. However, there are two user programmable end stops (CCW and CW, respectively) which are highly recommended for preventing twisting damage to the coax cables. The end stops can be settable for some over-travel if desired. I.e. >360 deg total turn. A smart easy-to-understand menu system is contained in the control box accessed from the front panel push buttons.

A special mouse is enclosed as well. Left click is CCW rotation and right click is CW. In addition, there are six user programmable buttons which can be programmed for your favorite directions (beacons, etc). Very handy. This is the first time I've seen a computer mouse being converted for anything else than just being a computer input device. If the special mouse is placed on the floor under the desk, one might have a handsfree, toe operated rotator during contests, etc.

Computer control interface is - of course - standard. I ordered the RS-232 version, but I understand there is an ultra-modern USB version (!) available as well. The two COM-ports of my desktop PC are anyhow unused these days, when wideband Internet connection is maintained via a separate NIC.

The PC control command protocol is selectable; AlfaSpid proprietary, Orion, Hygain and Yaesu, which serves for 100 % compatibility with most common PC-programs such as TRX-Manager, DXView, etc. But the well-equipped accessories box does not only contain a RS-232 connection cable, but also a CDROM with a logging and controlling program for fast setup.

I purchased the rotator from Jacek at the AlfaSpid European site (http://www.spid.alpha.pl/english/index.html), as adviced by James at Alfa Radio in Canada. This saved me a LOT of shipping costs as the rotator is a heavy piece of metal. Both these guys were very helpful and answered my questions in a gentle and professional way.

The User's Manual is instructive and well written. Rotator unit mounting to the mast tube (see link below) was a piece of cake.

I can truly recommend this rotator.

Ulf SM6FYQ
(http://www.geocities.com/ulflange2002/SM6FYQ.html)
VE5MX Rating: 2002-04-08
Great rotor Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
This isnt as much a review of the Alfa-SPID rotor as it is just some comments of mine after using 2 of them at VE6JY's in the recent WPX SSB Contest.

Don currently has 2 of them installed, 1 on the top 10m yagi - 7 el 48' boom at 145'- that has been up all winter (about 6 months up here); the other is on a 40m 3el home brew yagi with a heavy duty 40' boom and full size elements that has been up for 5 weeks or so. Both worked fine through some -30 degree weather and while I was there for WPX they both stood up to winds in excess of 55 km/hr.

In the contest they worked very well. The controller is small and you can put it just about anywhere, even out of reach with the remote "mouse" that lets you control the rotor and the presets from the desktop. The display readout is soft green LEDs about 3/4" high that I found very easy on the eyes. You can even put the controller near a computer monitor or radio as there is no large transformer and associated magenetic field to introduce noise or distort the monitor screen.

The rotor has 6 easily programmed presets that let me concentrate on the SO2R setup and making QSO's, knowing the rotor would faithfully go where it was told. The 1 degree accuracy is overkill on HF but with the relatively sharp patter of the 10m yagi, it was nice to know exactly where it was pointed.

My only complaint would be that there wasnt on installed on the top 15m yagi, the Tailtwister up there has been very un-cooperative since the cold weather started and Don hasn't got around to changing it yet, remember those 6 months of winter I mentioned earlier.... His plans for the summer involve putting a bunch more of these on all the more critical antennas.

Don is one of the owners of Alfa Radio and I think one of the main reasons they are carrying these rotors is because Don is very impressed with their simple and strong design. I know they certainly left a positive impression on me after using them.