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Reviews For: Cobra UltraLite Multiband Antenna

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : Cobra UltraLite Multiband Antenna
Reviews: 138MSRP: 89.95
Description:
A complete 10-160 wire antenna constructed to handle extreme weather
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.k1jek.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
001384.6
K7AAB Rating: 2008-02-02
Great wonderful antenna Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Just loved this antenna, made ham radio a wonderful hobby again. Received many wonderful signal reports and brought out the signals I normally didnt here with any other dipole or random wire. Wish I had the room for one at my present QTH.
N8TNJ Rating: 2008-01-21
Just plain Great Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
4 mons up in the air now, tunes with internal tuner easy. I have no problems working anything I can here. Ez up, stands up to weather good. This one leads the pack. Money well spent!!!
KI4VVI Rating: 2007-11-19
A good buy Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I have one of these hanging up in a 40 foot pine and it pulls good. I have DXed Europe, Canada and South America. Best of all, you don't need as much real estate to hang it compared to other wire antennas.
KA9EAK Rating: 2007-11-19
Great Antenna!!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
My Cobra Ultralite Senior has been up for one year now. Despite a less than optimal installation due to my QTH it performs wonderfully. Thru a year of wind, rain, and snow it consistently performs very well on all HF bands. Thanks Joe. There will be another Cobra Ultralite Senior in my future.



NI6S Rating: 2007-11-18
Awesome!! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I am writing this review to share the wonderful experiences I have had with the "Senior" version, which is 140' long. I initially mounted this as a sloper, with one end at 110" and the other end at 15', utilizing the full length of the ladder line (100'). It worked great! For kicks, I decided to raise the low end to full height, so that the antenna was a full flat top at 110'. My goodness! I consistently get 59+ reports on all bands and beat out many with yagis. This is the best antenna I have ever had and work all bands at the push of the tuner button on an FT-1000D. I have this fed through a 4:1 remote balun and run it to the rig with 25' of coax. If you have the room and the height, try one of these. It tunes all bands with ease and your signal will be LOUD!!!
KD5ZBZ Rating: 2007-10-28
Excellent Antenna Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I just wanted to give Joe an excellent rating on his cobra senior antenna. I bought 2 of them and run 1 north and south and 1 east and west. I run it into array solutions 4 to 1 TS200 tuner balum.I put it up about 32 feet and used 100 feet of the ladder line. My first contact was Maine on Moose Island 20 meters. Next San Francisco, CA, then Pensicola, FL. I'am using a 706 MKIIG run 100 watts. I would say thats pretty good for the last day of August with no sun spots. I was able to obtain a 1:1 swr on all bands 10-160. Good luck Joe thanks for a good product and good service. 10-28-07 I will get back to you in a few months when I've had a chance to make some more contacts. KD5ZBZ Ike, God bless.
W9MJF Rating: 2007-10-26
works great on mars frequencies Time Owned: more than 12 months.
have owned the ultralight sr for 3 yrs now
have had no problems tuning to where i need to
both amature and mars,have tried other antennas
found the cobra to be the best.not enough money
to make me change.
W3CE Rating: 2007-10-19
Super Radiator Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Just got back from portable operation in Potter County for the PaQSO contest. Strung the Senior between two trees about 30 feet up. I was only running 5 watt QRP and was getting 5 and 10 over nine!! This was on 75 meters with QSOs throughout the northeast. Had similar results on 40. Only had a few contacts on 20 for I was trying to get all 67 counties in PA. Will be buying the Junior for home use. (Not enough room for the big one). Will have to wait for some sunspots for realistic testing on 15 and 10.
WB0UZW Rating: 2007-10-16
OK but not noisy Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've had the Jr. up for app. 2 years. I tuned it with a Dentron MT-3000a on all bands (160-10). A couple of issues caused me to change to a different multiband dipole. First on 160, it would load up and I could here stations but they were not copying me. The SWR is to high, I'm burning up all the energy in the tuner. I emailed the company and they recommended more coax and do not cut the ladder line. Being only 40ft up, that made a very large coil of ladder line, not good and 70ft of coax hanging on the wall inside. I used a 4 to 1 balun from the coax to the feed line. I always wanted to try and attach the ladder line to the tuner directly but have never done it.
What caused me to change antennas was not hearing all the stations on a Sunday morning net on 75. The net control is a few miles from me and there were always weak stations that he copied that I couldn't. Searching the web I found complaints about the JR being more noisy then other dipoles. So I replaced the Jr with a W5GI Mystery Antenna and gave up trying to work 160 on a small city lot. My noise floor on average is 2 S units down and I can hear all the stations that net control talks to.
I think in a different config the Cobra Jr. would perform much better. But having to coil the ladder line hurt it's performance. With not having a lot of time to play with tuning the antenna it was easier to put up a different antenna, which has proved a positive change so far.
KE7OAY Rating: 2007-10-11
No blowtorch AM overloading Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I've only used this antenna for a few weeks, but I wanted to mention something no one else brought up. I live about a mile from RF hill, where all the AM, FM, and TV stations have their antennas. In the past, any kind of long wire, dipole or random wire antenna has picked up the local AM stations so hot that my rcvr front end is overloaded.

With the Cobra and its balanced feedline, the problem is gone. I can tune up on any band, and then tune my rcvr down to AM broadcast, and the signals are weak, we're talking 10K to 50K watt stations, and they are not strong enough to get full quieting.

I guess it's because of the balanced feed line and the tuner, If a particular frequency is not tuned, it is REALLY not tuned in and is effectively nulled out.

This was a totally unexpected benefit and makes the Cobra worth it's weight in gold to me. Everything about the antenna works great as described by everyone else here. I can always get an SWR of 1.1:1 or better. I work CW, and if I can here 'em, they can hear me.