Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: High Sierra HS-1800/Pro

Category: Antennas: HF Mobile & Accessories

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : High Sierra HS-1800/Pro
Reviews: 77MSRP: 300-$500
Description:
For General Mobile use. Light weight, high performance and covers entire HF spectrum. Uses new custom Black Hawk motor. Available with semi-automatic control box.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.cq73.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00774.7
M1WML Rating: 2008-10-30
TO EXPENSIVE FOR WHAT IT IS.. Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
i have used this antenna now for about 12 months off and on.. and has genraly been quite good but now the winter has come here in the uk i don,t think it would servive the uk winter being left on the car.. so it,s been put away till next summer..and at £400+ ($750) for this antenna is a bit expensive to.. but all said a good dx antenna. (next antenna would be a tarheel)
W4WSW Rating: 2008-10-13
Never Had a single problem.. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Well despite to the bad experience from others I can say that mine is not that way, I have my HS-1800/Pro for more than 4 years, I have this antenna installed in my house (never mobile) with an elevation of 10 feet from ground in a homemade bracket in one sede of the house.

I use this antenna daily, in All Bands and NEVER Failed, also I put in the antenna a 1-Kilo Watts and work Nice....! SWR always low, so I recommend this antenna 100%, of course make the correct installation and It Will Work...!!

73's de Luis
W4WSW
KC5QWG Rating: 2008-08-01
Contact Spring is a costly problem Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I think the HS-1800 is a fine antenna and has initially worked exceptionally well mounted to the rear ladder of my motorhome. I have never used it while mobile and safely pack it away when driving. The contact spring failed after about 9 months of very limited use,(the High Sierra manual tells me it should be changed yearly). The cost of a replacement spring was $15 with another $10 UPS shipping. High Sierra refused to use the US post office to ship the replacement. 41 cents to send a very small spring would have been a fair shipping cost. I think anyone thinking of buying a High Sierra antenna should research costs to maintain prior to purchase, I wish I had.
KB3OJM Rating: 2008-07-09
still working Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
After having this antenna now for about 4 months now I can say its performance is outstanding. I know it’s not as good as a full size antenna but I needed to be low profile due to CCRs. If I can hear a station 9 of 10 times I can talk to them. I am using 100 watts most of the time. I have a 600 watt amp that I use when the noise level is too high. I have contacted all 50 states, many countries in seas as far away as Italy, Cuba and the islands Ireland had me at 59 several times. Still trying for Japan and the Far East but with the band conditions I might be asking for too much. I still have the antenna ground mounted with 18 radials stretched out in 3/4 wagon wheel pattern. (The house in the way to get a full circle) I still don’t like the directions and email support seems to be the only way to go for help. If you decide to get this antenna I would make sure you get the right amount of coax during the order and add a few feet more due the cost. I am planning on moving mine out from the house to add more radials hoping to get better reception and less noise. It’s a good investment if you need a good low profile antenna.

----------------------
Earlier 3-star review posted by KB3OJM on 2008-04-04

I read all the reviews and asked around before dumping $600 in an antenna. Once I found a place to place it in my CCR area I was time to connect the cables. My first problem was on of the end that was sent was bad and that wasted a day trying to find the problem of my SWRs being off the chart. I replaced the end the nex day and installed the 8 radials that came with the antenna. SWRs went down below 1 on most meters. nothing higher than 2.5. the problem is noise, lots of it. 80 meters and 40 are very hard to hear at times. my noise level is S 6-10. worked my fist contest the weekend I installed the antenna wow it works I was able to contact most of the UK and even a few stations in South America on the first day. the catch is they were all using high power. seems the recption of this antenna is not the best most of the group QSO's I hear are limited by this I mean if 8 hams in the group I can only hear about 5 or less even when there only 50 miles away. I will be adding more radials this weekend to see it it helps. I am using an ICON 7000 at 100 watts with the antenna mounted on the ground at the back corner of my house. no over head electric wires. Tryed to contact Tech support after reading the reviews on how wonderful they were I was shocked on the lack of it. after 4 day of calling with no answer I called the main desk and the person on the line said they may be out or too busy making product. and to email them. more wasted time. you would think that supporting the sold products would be on the top of the list but I guess selling is a little more important ( no I am not slaming them ) sent of the email about the cable ends and I got a responce quickly, I was told in the email "we use the same ends and never had a problem" and that was it. nothing on what might be the cause or help in figuring it out. Not what I expected after investing in an upper end antenna. emailed again about the noise and got a responce from Jim that it might be band conditions and adding more radials might help with the poor recption. I'll give it a try and post again. Tunning the antenna is easy and seems to be a no brainer. there are several time with in the bands that yo might need to retune but i't not much. tuning from 80 - 40 takes a little longer than I would like. My IC-7000 starts to heat up almost into the red eack time its a long tune. the best thing to do is wright down what way the antenna needs to go per band. all in all I like the antenna even with the reception issure. I think it's way over priced and support needs some improvement.
N0ESQ Rating: 2008-06-29
I'm a convert! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Okay, I admit to being skeptical about this thing. I was buying an FT-897D for Field Day and wanted a mobile HF antenna that I could also use on the 5th wheel when parked. I picked up a 2 month old 1800/Por on eBay for $400 and tried to set it up at the 5th wheel, initially. I am a neophyte to this stuff, so it would have helped if somewhere a review had pointed out how sensitive and critical tuning is on this antenna. I had SWR all over the place and absolute no way without a meter, to have a reference to find out if I was even close. Frustrated as hell, I was ready to put it back on eBay and move on.

The following week a ham buddy came by the house with his MFJ antenna analyzer. Well, needless to say, we discovered that the antenna was completely flat on 20m and 40m and <1.5:1 on the remaining bands mounted to a homebrew trailer hitch mount. We ran a piece of masking tape up the side of the dust cover and marked the center of each band until I could take a Brother labelmaker and make white vinyl labels for each band. I removed the dust cover and placed a blank white label at the top of the base tube. You can see through the smoked plexiglass dustcover so rough tuning by band is accomplished by looking in the rear view mirror and matching up the horizontal stripes. It works great!

Another review mentioned that the operator gets people remarking all the time that they can't believe he is using a mobile antenna at his base. Yesterday, during Field Day '08, I was getting repeated comments that they could not believe I was a "1C" mobile. "Great signal" was the consistent reply. A couple of times I questioned whether my built-in SWR meter was still functioning because it did not show a bump. A quick touch to the switch and I confirmed the earlier perfect tune. I ended the day at 12,000 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park generating my own pileups on the by then very crowded 40m band by announcing "CQ Field Day."

If I had one constructive criticism it would be that the High Sierra folks are obviously quite smart and assume the rest of us are RF engineers as well. A little more detail in the installation manual and a note on the critical nature of tuning would be helpful for the beginner. Also, all of the photos on the web and in the manual are from a distance to show the entire length of the antenna. A few closer shots at various points on the antenna would assist with installation. All-in-all, a very good antenna.

I can't wait to move the antenna from my truck to the 5th wheel RV and setup my "summer cabin" station.

It's a fair piece of change, but lives up to the billings.
KG4GZW Rating: 2008-05-07
Im surprised Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I just purchased the platinum pack HS-1800pro. I was told that i should have looked at the El Dorado Package for home setup not mobile.So i made some changes after i mounted it on a 6'tripod i had laying around,removed the matching coil from mount(mobile with coil/home install not), cut 8-10' radials from 18 guage speaker wire /2 bundles of 4,also didnt bother with the control cable- to short. Also i dont like RG-58 cable,personally i prefer RG8/x. With all the changes it works Great!! 75 meters -swr 1:2-3 ,no tuner,not bad.Im trying to downsize and go more stealth. Tired of sticking out like a sore thumb. Took me a while to get the hang of the control of antenna. Im very pleased with the results.Its costly,but for my needs ,well, its worth it.
IRABREN Rating: 2008-03-19
Excellent Antenna Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I just received this and have it set up on the tripod on lawn - WOW - It is outstanding antenna(hs-1800 pro) - can tune 10-80 with controller - vhf works well too - it is well made - quality - but expensive - unlike others ( force 12 sigma xkr which I bought previously ) - It works out of the box !!!!!!! - this is important to me as I am new - with no background in electronics. The instructions are fairly good - but jump around a bit - but manual has good important info. Well packaged.
I would have preferred a 123 setup procedure exactly matching the tripod setup - I am not "handy" - but I did figure it out. It assembles pretty easily. The HS-1800 Pro antenna has very excellent reviews elsewhere in the reviews section. This setup ( Trailblazer ) includes a tripod and a vhf/uhf antenna - which works quite well. In a strong wind the tripod could blow over.
All in all I highly recommend it!! It is expensive - but worth it! Customer service - good. Unlike Force 12 - they answer the phone and Eileen knows the antenna and can answer basic questions. Check their "sale items - they have some neat stuff - I bought a Unun from them - it is an engineering marvel!! Also this antenna has a "quick disconnect for the whip - which is also an engineering marvel !! - May need more radials if signal is low( I added 4 more for 20m ). Jim( the owner ) is a pleasure to talk with and very helpful.
Ira, KE5STP
N3LJS Rating: 2008-02-14
Black Only Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have the 1500 MKII, I was going to get this one but they only come in black. I like to get it in silver, they don't give you a choice anymore. It would be GREAT if they did. The color doesn't make it work any better, but the silver looks good on my truck.
W4LTD Rating: 2008-02-14
You're On A Mobile Antenna? Time Owned: more than 12 months.
If I had a dime for everytime I hear "I can't believe you're running on a mobile antenna mounted to a tree stump in your backyard!" -- I'd be a millionaire. I run my Kenwod TS-940S through my Heathkit SB-220 at about 600 Watts and reach DX equal to my buddy's tower/beam array. All I did was (1)bury the eight 10-ft radlal wires (2)attached the Six-shooter capacity hat and (3)replaced the 6-foot whip with a 102" whip, soon to be replaced with a 12-ft telescopic. I get 1.0:1 SWR on 20M, 1.3:1 on 40M and 1.6:1 on 75M -- all tuned from the 1800/Pro, no other tuner needed, not even the radio's auto-tuner. Super Antenna & Customer Service (Eileen) Is Wonderful! Should be a 10 rating...
KQ5TF Rating: 2008-02-11
Great antenna for stealth Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I just bought the antenna with the ground radial kit. I mounted it on a pipe at ground level and buried the radials about an inch deep. I also live in a restricted neighborhood. My first contact was Buenes Aires and I can tune up to 1:1 on almost any frequency. Great antenna but a little expensive (for me). I'll report again after I've used it a while. Customer service was excellent and quick - even on the weekend.