| W8DTW |
Rating:     |
2010-06-01 | |
| No Compromise!!! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| For those of us with a QTH in an antenna restricted area, the Comet CHA250B is an excellent option. Its inobtrusive design and ease of mounting make it "acceptable" to critics of all stripes. Best of all this product performs! It is an excellent receiving antenna and no slouch as a transmitting unit. QSLs from my QTH on Lake Erie with Maine, Texas, Florida and California just to name a few. I've found the CHA250B to be a "no compromise option." |
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| NP3ST |
Rating:      |
2010-05-19 | |
| WORKS FOR ME |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| LIVING ON A HOA CONDO AND AFTER APROVAL,I DECIDED FOR THE 250BX,NO TO MUCH HOPE ON THE ANTENNA,BASED ON THE COMENTS HERE.INSTALLED,OVER 10 FEET ABOVE GROUND,CONECT IT TO RADIO,FIRE UP,AND CONTACTED KP4BI,IN PUERTO RICO.ALSO TO MENTION SWR 1.3,ON ALL BANDS,DOES NOT ACTIVATE THE RADIO TUNNER,I CONSIDER ALSO THE GOOD CONDITIONS,AT THE MOMENT.THE BX MODEL,COMES WITH A ALUMINUM PAINT/PROCTECOR,WICH IS VERY GOOD TO HAVE ON IT.IN GENERAL,IF YOU NEED TO PUT A VERTICAL WITHOUT COMPLICATIONS OF GROND,RADIALS ETC,THIS IS IT!FOR ME IS 5/5. |
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| WA4JM |
Rating:  |
2010-04-17 | |
| J.H.C., It's a dummy load with tubing! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| Holy Smokes Guys, no radials, no ground, 18 feet of tubing, ARRL Lab says it sucks. We bought 2 and they suck. Maybe be they got SUCKED into Gotham Vertcals in the day! And IT runs from DC to Daylight. It slices and dices... Give me a break. Spend money on the ARRL Antenna Book. You will be happy. |
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| K3AXR |
Rating:    |
2010-04-10 | |
| Mediocre at best |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| I've had this antenna since last summer. I live in a restricted area so must operate in "stealth" mode. I have it ground mounted. I asked the manufacturer about what I perceived as only mediocre performance. He said that it worked best if it was 35 feet in the air. that is NOT stealth, so beware their advertising. they also said it does not need radials. After consulting with fellow hams who know antennas they agreed that there is no such thing as a "radialess" vertical. They recommended adding radials all the same length..the height of the antenna which is 23'. I added 16 23' radials and I noticed a big improvement in performance. Again, beware their advertising. I am now doing fairly well with it and working lots of DX, particularly on PSK. The best bands seem to be 20, 17, 15 (not been able to try 10 yet) and 6. 40 and 80 are not very good. Given my "stealth" requirements I don't have many options. I do think the antenna is WAY overpriced. It would be more appreciated at half the price. |
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| GM8SVB |
Rating:      |
2010-03-27 | |
| Comet Spare Parts |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have had this antenna for a number of years and it has worked superb for me with my postage stamp garden. A couple of weeks ago the mounting bracket parted company with the antenna. I could not get a bracket only here in the UK. So I got on to the agents in the US and they could supply me with the bracket only. I have found them very helpful and I have just received the bracket within 2 weeks. Excellent Service from NCC |
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| M3XPJ |
Rating:      |
2010-03-26 | |
| Excellent HF Vertical |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I have just purchased a CHA250B and given a brief test on 20 and 40 meters and the remaining bands the results are amazing. this has really opened up the HF bands for me in an area where I have been struggling for some time with end fed and smaller portable HF antennas. This vertical really works well. |
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| AE6PN |
Rating:     |
2010-02-01 | |
| work better in higher band |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have been using this CHA-250B for 2 years now. I use mostly on 3.5MHz, and 7MHz.
The antenna work about same as good mobile antenna such as good quality screw driver antenna. But, it does not work as well as G5RV or full size dipole with 1/4 wave high.
I live in a city lot, so I can not have large antenna, this antenna is hard to see compare to many other vertical antenna.
it receive very well.
I have placed RF choke ( split type ) on coax cable. and roll up some coax 4,5 times right below ANT , so coax radiation is minimum.
it is compromise, but if UR choice is NO ANT or any ANT, CHA-250B may be choice.
AE6ZW |
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| KD7JYM |
Rating:      |
2010-01-30 | |
| works very well. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Got one of these for Christmas, have been using it for a month or so. Just moved to a new house and there is nothing here to hang antennas from. So while I work out a creative solution to that problem, I put this antenna up on a piece of pipe that the previous owner left on the property. The pipe is a section of top rail from chain link fence, about 1 1/4" in diameter and 18' long, not very rigid. Wanting to stay on the cheap I put some eye bolts into it and used some ratcheting nylon tie downs as guys, anchored to 4 two foot sections of rebar I set at 90 degrees from one another 8 feet from the base.
With all that the antenna is about 17 feet up and is being fed with a 50' length of RG8X.
Run the radio at 50W because the power supply I have isn't big enough to run it at 100.
From Seattle, I can get all of California on 75m with no problem. Could just be favorable conditions, but I've done it every night for the last month, even when the static crashes were trying to deafen me.
I've had a couple contacts into Hawaii and Alaska on 40m.
Today on 20m I worked a few stations on the East Coast and one in New Mexico. I heard Mexico City and Japan but they were too popular for me to get in quickly enough to have a chance.
Generally gets good signal reports.
I think the key with this antenna or any like it is to have your expectations in order. I wanted this thing because it is very simple to setup, fairly compact, and really quick to setup and take down. I will take it with me traveling (by car) and keep it around for emergency use. If you needed to setup an emergency station in a disaster or something, you could grab this thing and put it on a flag pole or anything else you could find to bolt it to and you're in business. If you have trees or buildings to string a wire antenna between, that would probably be the better way to go, but there are a lot of places you aren't going to have that.
Even the cobbled together setup I have right now would take less than 30 minutes to have it up and ready to use.
Lastly, I am impressed with the wind loading. We live just a few hundred yards back from a bluff over Puget Sound and the wind gets to whipping through here pretty fast. There was a really windy night a couple weeks ago and I got up in the middle of the night thinking I was going to have to take the antenna down to keep it from getting broken. To my surprise, I went out to see it hardly moving in the gusts that were knocking over trash cans and spreading little bits of pine tree branches all over the place.
As for whether it is a good value...I paid close to $400 for it. I tend to look at these things in this way:
1. does it do what I want?
2. could I make something myself that accomplishes the same goal?
3. if I could make it myself, can I do it in an amount of time that reasonably compares to how long I'd have to work to earn the money?
It definitely does what I want it to. I do think that I could probably build something like it, it isn't very complex. However, the cost of the materials needed to construct it and the time it would take to build one and have it come out as nice as what you get here I think would far exceed what goes into buying one. Its made of tapered sections of aluminum tubing and I am not sure what is in the matching section. I could see spending a couple hundred dollars on parts to make it and spending a full day running around town to dig up everything needed, plus several hours if not a couple days to put it all together. So that said, I really do feel the $400 is well spent.
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| WB9NFD |
Rating:      |
2009-12-25 | |
| Very Good |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
After 2 years of reading reviews I bought one.
Antenna is up 14 ft. in the clear and works great. Running CW and digital modes I find I can work almost anyone I can hear from 80-20 meters. Of course the other bands are dead so I can't try them yet. SWR is 1.6 or less on all bands except 30m where it is 2:1.
For me and my type of operation this antenna works very well.
Richard WB9NFD |
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| W4GLX |
Rating:      |
2009-10-30 | |
| Very Pleased ! |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| I Bought mine a year ago though word of mouth from a Friend and i am having a blast with this Antenna i made contacts Into NYC,MD,VA,CA,NH,VH,MO,GA,CO,NJ,Al signal reports have been 5-5 to 5-9 Cant wait Till the Sun spot Cycle Kicks In. i was using a Hustler BTV5 with 40 Ground Radial what a disapointment would Not tune i rate that at Zero. |
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