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Reviews For: M2 436CP42 U/G

Category: Antennas: VHF/UHF+ Directional (Yagi, quad, etc.)

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Review Summary For : M2 436CP42 U/G
Reviews: 3MSRP: 358
Description:
42-element circular-polarized 70cm - satellite
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.m2inc.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0033
N3UJJ Rating: 2010-04-12
These Guys came through in a pinch Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I don’t know why people say that these guys don’t respond, I had a problem where I needed replacement elements. Not only did they reply to my eMail within 5 minutes, they bent over backwards to help me. Wyatt took “Personal” interest in trying to get me back on-line in time for the Arecibo moon-bounce event.
WA4SCA Rating: 2007-03-31
Excellent satellite performance, poor manual Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I recently replaced my 20 year old KLMs with the equivalent M2 antennas. The good part is that the quality of materials is outstanding. While the KLMs were state of the art in their day, and performed well, they are Yugos compared to the M2 BMW. From a mechanical standpoint, construction is straight forward, but does require considerable patience. The elements very by as little as 1/16". I recommend sitting at a table with a rules and labeling each with its length and position on the boom. Also, some of the phasing lines are short enough that you get some very tight bends at the connectors. Adding an additional 1 wavelength in a couple of places would have resulted in the same phased and impedance, but allowed easier dressing of the lines.

The true performance of any antenna is how well it does with weak signals. At present, there are only LEO satellites up, and they all have good down links. However, a rough comparison with my old KLM shows something like 1-2 S units improvement, with much flatter SWR and shift when going from RHCP to LHCP.

The only bad thing I found was in the documentation. It is poorly done, with numerous errors, both minor and one significant. They seem to have cut and pasted from earlier models, but not made the needed corrections, nor even done any proof reading. What makes this worse is that M2 does not reply to e-mail in a timely manner, if at all, and does not return phone calls. So, if you want to talk with them, it will most likely be on your dime. If English is not your first language, or you live outside the US, you are going to have problems.
PA0ERC Rating: 2006-08-04
No service at all....... Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Antenna is difficult to build, takes a hell of alot of time to measure all elements and the way you have to mount them on the boom is extremely time consuming. The really bad part is they do not mail you back if you have real problems, like one element with wrong size unobtainable in Europe AND a manual with mistakes, they just play dead. I do sats since Oscar 7, so I do have some experience with XY yagi's. IMHO no support is no returning customer, period!