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Reviews For: Cushcraft R-8

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : Cushcraft R-8
Reviews: 105MSRP: 450 to $480
Description:
40-6m omnidirectional vertical antenna
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.cushcraftamateur.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
001054
KC5TJG Rating: 2012-06-15
Cushcraft is now Mighty Fine Junk (MFJ) Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
What a dissapointment. Here's what was wrong with my R8. (1) 17 meters is resonant too low; 20 meters is resonant way too high. Because both bands are set by traps enclosed in a single housing, there is no way to lower the resonant frequency on 20 meters without also lowering it on 17 meters. What I had to do was forget about using 17 meters in order to get 20 meters down to the low end of the band. (2) There is NO CUSTOMER SUPPORT now that Cushcraft is owned by MFJ. They're really put their "Mighty Fine Junk" imprint on what used to be a fine product from a fine company. Emails bounced back. Messages left on their "tech support" page online were never answered. Phone calls? ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring.... I did reach one tech support guy. He couldn't even give me the basic information, like correct radiator lengths, etc. (3) The product is advertised in QST and elsewhere as handling "full legal power." Apparently that's a reference to 1500 watts PEP, because, according to a table in the user's manual, all the antenna is rated for on cw is 750 watts. Uh, I don't think that's full legal power.

What we have here is MFJ gobbling up yet another once-fine company. It's their MO--if you can't beat the competition, buy them out, then lower the quality of the product and the service so people know they're now working with MFJ.

What a pity.
WB8ZTP Rating: 2012-06-13
Works great! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I’ve had the Cushcraft R8 Vertical Antenna up for over 2 years now. I love it! I have it mounted on a 10’ stick of 1 ¼” rigid conduit, 3’ of which is in the ground so the antenna is actually 7’ above ground. I added 3 parachute cord guys for support.

I’m VERY HAPPY with its performance on all bands, including 6 meters. I’m running 100 watts on SSB and if I can hear them, I can usually work them. I’ve been very surprised many times after only a few calls behind the big guns, in a small pileup, the DX picks me up!

With some careful attention on the assembly I believe you’ll get great performance from this antenna!

73, Mark
WB8ZTP
N8DDW Rating: 2012-03-24
Works well for the price! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
When you purchase the R-8 you get exactly what you paid for... Many bands, no radials and adequate performance to get on the air in a meaningful way when horizontal space is tight or a huge tower and antenna farm is not feasible.

I live in Los Angeles and while I'd love to slap up a 40' tower with a nice Stepper IR Beam on top and a few wires cascading down its just not in the cards like it was when I had 10 acres back in Michigan.

I chose the R8 because it gave me the most frequency coverage for the buck without any ground radials. Like many other's in this part of the country I have about 10 feet total separating my house from the one next to it and only limited space to add radials which makes radial dependent antennas not an option.

It assembles in a lazy afternoon and as others have written, just can't seem to stand up straight without leaning one way or another. I have it mounted about 15 feet off the ground and I added the guy rope kit for safety. I am near the ocean and winds in excess of 50 MPH happen more than I'd like. The R8 has survived winds gusting over 70 MPH. I have had it up now for about 4 years and amazingly, it hasn't fallen over on my neighbors roof in a pile of rubble.

It sure isn't pretty, more like a giant banana that lazily flops from side to side. With a wide range tuner it does exactly what it says it will, keep me on the air across 8 bands and with an adequate enough signal to make tons of contacts.

If a vertical is all you can do... and you have no real estate for radials... This antenna is the cadillac of compromise and worth the price of admission.
W2ASS Rating: 2012-03-20
very good HF antenna Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I read alot about all other kinds of antennas, But they all had to big of a counterpoise. Like the GAP TITAN with it's 80 inch counterpoise, or the HY-GAIN AV-640 with its 72" counterpoise, They were all to big for my needs. Where i was allowed to put a antenna i had only 10 feet of space between the house and the fence. I had a concret floor from the street to the back yard, so putting in ground radials was out, So then i read about the R8 with it's 46" counterpoise and it's 6 meters thru 40 meter range plus the warc bands, So i tried it and it worked fine, It took about 7 hours to construct the antenna. then it was mounted onto a non-penetration tripod, cause of the concrete floor. Now it was a concern being that the antenna was only 6 inches away from house on one side and 6 inches away from a metal fence on other side, I thought the SWR's would be crazy. But it all worked out just fine. My SWR'S are flat on the phone bands. Where is where i wanna stay anyway, the phone bands. This is my first vertical and the r8 cushcraft worked out better than i thought it was gonna work out. Cushcraft really has a good vertical here with the R8. And it only cost me 439.00 from hamcity.com And now i have ordered a ameritron AL-811H amp, So it will help me get even more dx stations.
M0EDX Rating: 2012-03-09
AAAAA +++++ Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Having dismantled my large Mosley Pro-57B 7 elements HF yagi I thought about QRV with some sort of vertical. I had verticals in the past - Butternut (2 of them, not impressed), GAP Titan DX (ok).

I needed something with no radials which will work on HF without messy radials.

I have carefully read the reviews and decised to purchase a Cushcraft R-8.

Asembly (by G4HOM) took some 3 hours, and we managed to install R8 in the dark, just 2 of us. SWR was acceptable on ALL bands. Later we re-tuned the antenna slightly for my favourite parts of the bands.

SWR is normally 1.1 on all bands. A bit narrow on 40 M.And on 20 m resonance is around 14 220 (can be lowered by sacrifycing 7 mhz SSB).

Mostly important, I am amazed at the antenna's performance. Not a yagi, but the antenna is working. I even received a reply from the 9A2 station (I was running 200 W) on 20 m to be the strongest station that night, hi !

I have tested the antenna via the reverse beacon network, often finding stations around the world reporting my signals to be 11-56 db over the noice level.

Very good antenna.

And when it rains (I use just 3 home made rope guy wires), the resonance practically does not change. Say, 10 khz on 40 m.

G4HOM has helped a lot of people with antennas. He was very pleased with the antenna quality. It was the best we have seen so far.

73 !

M0EDX

www.m0edx.com


PY2JF Rating: 2011-12-21
I'm amazed by the results! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
After reading every single review here for Cushcraft R8, Hy-Gain AV640 and Hustler 5BTV, I decided by R8. I needed a HF antenna and having some space limitations, vertical antennas looked the way to go to me.

After mounting, adjusting and installing in the roof, I started, after 30 years SK in HF, trying some dxing (my main use for this antenna). I have to say, I’m amazed by the results.

Today, exactly 18 days past from installation, I managed to work 107 DXs countries, with 52 unique. All this just using my FT-950 (100W) in SSB (80%) and PSK31 (20%). For all these contacts, 7 were pileups, and after the big guns leave, I could make all 7.

Well, as I suspected, is totally possible to have fun without spent a ton of money. Simple don’t expect it to be better than a directional antenna, it’s not, but it's totally worth. And change bands without deal with antenna switches great.

For those of you looking for this antenna, I made a complete YouTube review un-boxing, assembling, adjusting, installing and testing. The audio is in Portuguese language, but English subtitle is available just clicking in the CC (Closed Caption) button.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU2h_scaz_o

Hope you enjoy.

73 from PY2JF – João Roberto
W5WVO Rating: 2011-11-01
Like it very much Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
First, a caveat: Everything is relative to something else. If I were comparing this antenna's performance on 40m, for example, with a full-size 3-element yagi at 220 ft, there wouldn't be much of a comparison. The R-8 would lose handsomely and without shame.

But in my case, I'm comparing it to a low (15' at the high end) non-resonent sloper, force-fed at the antenna end through some hellacious SWR in most cases and matched to 1.1:1 or better at the radio end by the K3's superb antenna autotuner. This sorry excuse for an antenna and the R-8 share the two inputs to a manual A-B coaxial switch.

So first the performance. What I expected, especially on the lower-frequency bands, was that the R-8 would outperform the sloper on DX, and in some cases (where lobes lined up right) the sloper would outperform the R-8 on short, high angle propagation paths.

And that is exactly what I found. What I wasn't prepared for was how much better on long DX paths the R-8 was, especially on 40m and 30m CW. Differences of up to 3 or 4 S units were observed in many cases.

So it works. On all bands, as advertised. For a low-profile all-band vertical, a compromise antenna in most (though not all) cases, it works very well indeed. Right now I'm running a barefoot K3 into it, but an amplifier is planned that will add another 10 dB on to that.

Now, the assembly. First of all, don't even think about mounting this antenna without guys unless you live on the Moon. Order the guy kit. The ground anchors in this kit are clearly for lighter-weight duty than what I expected. If you live in a high-wind area, I would suggest procuring some better ones, and perhaps guying the antenna at two levels as was suggested to another buyer.

There was only one missing part and many extras. The missing part was a screw screw-up where they sent five 8-32 3/8" and three 8-32 1/2" screws, when it should have been four of each. A trip to Home Depot remedied that problem, though to get the 8-32 x 1/2" screw in SS, I had to buy a hex-key cap type rather than a Phillips head type. Other than that one screw, everything was in the box.

The shipping box was a mess, crushed and bent at one end and held together with copious amounts of shipping tape. Additionally, it had obviously been opened and re-closed prior to being shipped to me. Requiring inspection and sign-to-accept wasn't an option when I ordered; I found the box in my patio.

As a pro technical writer and illustrator, I found a lot to be desired in the assembly manual. Reading between the lines and using mechanical common sense are required. The antenna went together well, but considering I have a lot of experience doing this sort of thing -- as most hams do -- it should be expected to. An inexperienced antenna builder, however, is bound to get one thing or another screwed up and need tech support. Since Cushcraft was assimilated by MFJ, I have no experience with their tech support, so won't comment.

All in all, I give it a 4.5 for performance and a 3.5 for assembly manual quality for an average of 4. I won't comment on the rather bad shipping damage, since I don't know who caused it. But at the end of the day, it was (almost) all there, and I now have a pretty darn nice antenna to show for it.

I would recommend this antenna for experienced hams, not for first-time antenna builders unless they have experienced Elmer assistance.

----------------------
Earlier 4-star review posted by W5WVO on 2011-11-01

First, a caveat: Everything is relative to something else. If I were comparing this antenna's performance on 40m, for example, with a full-size 3-element yagi at 220 ft, there wouldn't be much of a comparison. The R-8 would lose handsomely and without shame.

But in my case, I'm comparing it to a low (15' at the high end) non-resonent sloper, force-fed at the antenna end through some hellacious SWR in most cases and matched to 1.1:1 or better at the radio end by the K3's superb antenna autotuner. This sorry excuse for an antenna and the R-8 share the two inputs to a manual A-B coaxial switch.

So first the performance. What I expected, especially on the lower-frequency bands, was that the R-8 would outperform the sloper on DX, and in some cases (where lobes lined up right) the sloper would outperform the R-8 on short, high angle propagation paths.

And that is exactly what I found. What I wasn't prepared for was how much better on long DX paths the R-8 was, especially on 40m and 30m CW. Differences of up to 3 or 4 S units were observed in many cases.

So it works. On all bands, as advertised. For a low-profile all-band vertical, a compromise antenna in most (though not all) cases, it works very well indeed. Right now I'm running a barefoot K3 into it, but an amplifier is planned that will add another 10 dB on to that.

Now, the assembly. First of all, don't even think about mounting this antenna without guys unless you live on the Moon. Order the guy kit. The ground anchors in this kit are clearly for lighter-weight duty than what I expected. If you live in a high-wind area, I would suggest procuring some better ones, and perhaps guying the antenna at two levels as was suggested to another buyer.

There was only one missing part and many extras. The missing part was a screw screw-up where they sent five 8-32 3/8" and three 8-32 1/2" screws, when it should have been four of each. A trip to Home Depot remedied that problem, though to get the 8-32 x 1/2" screw in SS, I had to buy a hex-key cap type rather than a Phillips head type. Other than that on screw, everything was in the box.

The shipping box was a mess, crushed and bent at one end and held together with copious amounts of shipping tape. Additionally, it had obviously been opened and re-closed prior to being shipped to me. Requiring inspection and sign-to-accept wasn't an option when I ordered; I found the box in my patio.

As a pro technical writer and illustrator, I found a lot to be desired in the assembly manual. Reading between the lines and using mechanical common sense are required. The antenna went together well, but considering I have a lot of experience doing this sort of thing -- as most hams do -- it should be expected to. An inexperienced antenna builder, however, is bound to get one thing or another screwed up and need tech support. Since Cushcraft was assimilated by MFJ, I have no experience with their tech support, so won't comment.

All in all, I give it a 4.5 for performance and a 3.5 for assembly manual quality for an average of 4. I won't comment on the rather bad shipping damage, since I don't know who caused it. But at the end of the day, it was (almost) all there, and I now have a pretty darn nice antenna to show for it.

I would recommend this antenna for experienced hams, not for first-time antenna builders unless they have experienced Elmer assistance.
K3HW Rating: 2011-09-30
182 countries worked so far.... Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had this antenna for little over a year and a half. I really wish people would not review items after one week like some of our recent posters. This antenna is a solid performer that stood up to Hurricane Irene with no problems. You do need to guy this antenna because it is top heavy. On 40 and 15 meters this antenna is incredible. The other bands are good as well but for some reason 40 and 15 perform just a tad better then the rest. Have worked 182 countries in 18 months with this and a 1000 watt amp along with a IC-7600. The assembly is a little time consuming. If you read the instructions and take your time and make sure to tighten all the bolts you should be able to have it assembled in 4 hours or so. My SWR has always been 1.2 or less across every band. Add an auto antenna tuner and you will be flat. Mounted on military mast at about 20 feet with three guys wires. Buy the additional guy wire kit, it is worth it! The sensitivity of this antenna for a vertical surprised me. No radials to deal with makes it easy to tune and setup and low profile helps with the neighbors. No compliants at all. As for longevity I will leave another review in a couple of years to address that. Give it a chance, you will not be sorry.
N6TAU Rating: 2011-09-22
REDUX Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
My initial review was not very flattering of this antenna, mostly due to a broken match box, which by the way, was also poorly assembled and soldered.

My attempts to contact Cushcraft/MFJ via phone and email met with complete failure.

HRO was a different matter. I called HRO after failing to make contact with the manufacturer. They advised me to ship the bad unit back to them. Since they are less than a hudred miles from me, UPS delivered the box the next day, whereupon the service manager called me to tell me that they had contacted Cushcraft and that a new box would be forthcoming.

That was friday. Yesterday (Wed), I noticed a small brown box sitting at my doorstep when I arrived home.

Eagerly opening the box, I was disturbed by a rattle inside. Opening the box, I discovered hat the nut holding the SO-239 connector in place had come dislodged.

Tightening it back up, I installed the box onto the antenna and did an SWR check. Even though the antenna was only two feet off the ground and laying parallel to the ground, I got a reasonable match across all bands. When I say reasonable I mean 1:2 or 1:3. Mostly I was looking for anything that should something other than infinity since that's what I got with the old box. I was surprised to see it go almost flat on two bands, even lying on the ground.

Satisfied that I was likely to get a good SWR when the antenna was raised, I hung the antenna about 12 feet off the ground and ran 75 feet of LMR400 to the shack.

I checked the SWR again using an old MFJ SWR analyzer and got 1:2 or better across all bands.

plugging the coax into my TS2000, I fired up the rig to see what I could here.

At this point, my appreciation of this antenna changed dramatically. I had been using a long wire (receive only) in the interim just to be able to listen in. I no sooner turned the knob when a very strong CQ call came in. Naturally, I answered back. A nice QSO ensued, all on 5 watts.

All in all, with only a day of airtime, I am happy with this antenna. I still give it a 4 due to QC issues.

----------------------
Earlier 1-star review posted by N6TAU on 2011-09-12

I bought this antenna a few days after hurricane Irene stormed through the area. (just three days before the Labor Day weekend) Had been off HF for a few years and the storm kicked some sense into me. I ordered it from HRO (great service) and it arrived the next day.

I took the day off work and spent most of the day assembling it. That was not really an issue as I like to take my time when I follow other people's assembly directions. (measure twice, cut once)

Couple of things about the parts: Throw away the worm gear straps and get some stainless steel ones. I stripped a number of the soft steel bands and had to replace them.

I hate the clamshell type clamps used to hold the radials. It almost takes two people to hold everything in place to install them. I would like to see something along the lines of set screws for each element.

Anyway, assembly complete, I rented a lift to install it on my 50 foot tower (medically unable to climb tower) and with a friend, hoisted the antenna up to its final resting place, hooked up seventy-five feet of lmr400 and called it a day.

Along with a Ringo Ranger, the install only took a couple of hours, mostly getting used to the operation of the lift. After all that, we called it a day. My friend went home and I turned to other things.

Later that night I went down to the ham shack (basement) and plugged the business end of the LMR400 into my TS-820S anxious with excitement.

I was able to tune a coupe of stations in and listen, but it had been a long day so I pulled the plug and went off to sleepyland.

Next morning was Saturday and the YL was out doing her rounds. I went down to the shack and started scanning the bands. Nothing, not a thing on any band. I thought 'There should be something, somewhere, but remembered that there had been times in the past where all the bands were dead. I'd come back in the evening.

Later that evening, I was back at the controls. Tried a little tuning and discovered that the Kenwood 820 antenna tuner would only get a decent match on one band. At first I chalked it up to forgetting how to operate the 820 but then pulled the manual off the net and went through the initial set up procedure. Everything checked out alright but there were some anomalies, such as no output at all on 10 meters. I chalked it up to a radio that hadn't been used in a long time and might have been faulty.

Next came the TS-50 followed by the TS-2000. neither of the autotuners for these great radios could tune out the high SWR.

Finally (Yea, I should have done this first) I pulled out my MFJ SWR analizer and it showed SWR off the scale. I sent an email to cushcraft but haven't heard from them, in fact my email got bounced cuz their email server doesn't have me on a whitelist. Tried calling them a dozen times during business hour and never got anything other than a busy signal.


Looked at the reviews here (wish I had come here first) and read that a number of people had issues with the match box that comes with the antenna.

Since I couldn't climb the tower, a couple of friends climbed up and brought the antenna back to the ground, where I promptly pulled the match box off and opened it up. Not surprisingly, the big blue capacitor soldered in parallel had broken off and was floating in box, wedged between the circuit board and the box itself. I looked at the few solder joints that were visible and discovered that every one of them were cold solder joints, you could see the crystalline structure with the naked eye in bad light. I thought about pulling it out of the box but could see that I would probably have to destroy the box to get it out. I called HRO, you remember them? I bought the antenna from them. Talked to a nice fellow who patiently listened to my rant (not really a rant) and said he would call Cushcraft to see what could be done.

I give this antenna a low rating based solely on the quality of workmanship which I would describe as substandard at best. I seriously doubt that I would buy another product from the MFJ family after seeing this product. Maybe it's an anomaly but the reviews I've read suggest otherwise.
W5KVA Rating: 2011-08-21
MN8 Matching Network Intermittent Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
In addition to my earlier experience where two of these antennas were damaged in shipping, and where one antenna had parts missing, I later found another issue that was not immediately evident. The antenna would cut out with high SWR intermittently and I discovered that there was a broken solder connection from one of the RF coils to PCB in the MN-8 matching network. After repairing this, the antenna has been rock solid with performance as expected.

I understand Cushcraft/MFJ has recently addressed the weak shipping carton which contributed to the damages reported in shipping.

All said, MFJ has never responded to any of my emails concerning any of my issues, nor have they responded to my retailer who requested them to contact me directly for proper resolution to make me whole.

It is my opinion that MFJ's lack of response can only be described as "Mokusatsu" to which I am now hesitant to purchase their products.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu