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Reviews For: Radio Works Carolina Windom 80

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : Radio Works Carolina Windom 80
Reviews: 85MSRP: 89.95
Description:
Multi-band wire antenna with increasing gain vs frequency
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.radioworks.com/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
15854.1
KA1DFO Rating: 2004-11-30
After 1-1/2 yrs, still great Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had the antenna up For 18 months , strung between 2 trees at about 50 ft. It works as advertised. I have been very pleased with its performance, I use it on 75, 40 and 20m, less on 15, up to 600W. It will load on 160 (100W). I do use a tuner ( TT 229) to trim on 75, don't really need to, but I do. Tuner on by-pass on 40,20,15. Need the tuner on 160.

Installation uses pulleys and weights, to allow for movement. The last wire was not on pulleys, it didn't stretch enough!

Would buy another, I'm trying to see enough space to hang a 160.

A lot of info on the web site, too.
AC0H Rating: 2004-10-05
Great performance and rugged Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I had the Carolina Windom 80 up for 5 years and never had ANY performance or quality issues with the antenna. I had it installed as a flat top between two luckily spaced trees while living in the Iowa country side. It never came down or broke and it survived some serious winter weather, a 2 day ice storm and a 70mph, 18" blizzard to name a few.

I didn't use pulleys on the dipole ends or any other suspension system. I did hang the dipole off the tower with a 1 foot long rubber bungy and suspended the feed point out from the tower with a PVC standoff/arm.

The performance of this antenna was spectacular. I won the Iowa sections of the 1999 Nov SS and 2000 ARRL DX contest with a TS-520, tuner, and this antenna.

You do need to pay strict attention to the install instructions to expect maximum performance from this antenna.
F1DFR Rating: 2004-09-10
A good antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
No much room in the garden to install a tower
with yagis, the CW80 antenna was my choice and
a good one. After some weeks on HF bands (thanks
to CW abolishment !), I made many SSB DX in all
directions (Svalbard, Japan, Australia, South
Africa, Antartica, South America, West Coast USA,
etc ... (all confirmed by QSL) with 500 W max.
and got good reports on all bands.
My CW80 is made of insulated wire (special order
from RADIOWORKS) and is installed in "U" at about
10m above the ground. Very low SWR (no need of a
tuner). Unfortunately does not work on 160m
(infinite SWR).

73s de F1DFR
AA2T Rating: 2004-05-13
Great for Wire Antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Put one up about a year ago at our RACES station with a 706mkiiG. Did not run any high power through it, but it runs just fine on all the bands 75-15 meters. On 15 through 10 meters, the R6000 we have installed at the same location, did a better job. Part of it might have been the longer coax run on the CW80. I dont subscribe to the vertical radiator, but I think it's just a good off center fed dipole with pretty low loss 4:1 balun and 1:1 un-un... Last year went through FD without any sweat.
I also let another ham borrow another CW80 I had and he has experimented with all different kinds of wire antennas and the CW80 was the best he has ever had. He is mostly qrp fan.
VP1MWB Rating: 2004-04-09
Water and smoke Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have had nothing but trouble with this antenna!
The balun isolator fills up with water and the top balun??? Is it a balun?? went up in smoke with 500w. How can a piece of "coaxial cable" be used as a radiator? Either the top balun has no shunt inductance or is some magical device that is beyond physics. I bought a different one from dxantennas.com an it works ok.
WA1TJB Rating: 2004-03-04
Great Antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had my antenna up for over two years now. It is mounted as an inverted V with the peak at 50 feet and approximately 160 degree included angle. Performance has been nothing short of fantastic. I use it for SSB and run an Icom 746 Pro with 100 watts into it. I've worked well over 100 DXCC entities with it, including some nice DX on 80 meters. The 746 internal tuner keeps the SWR very low except on the low end of 10 meters. I'm a happy customer!

73 de Gary
WA1TJB
K6CA Rating: 2003-12-01
Great multibander! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
After 6 months, I can say that compared to a popular vertical and a G5RV, this antenna is the overall winner. All bands tune easily with a Kenwood auto tuner and no tuner needed for my favorite hangouts on 80 and 40. Just worked number 100 on 40, BY. Its kind of a set it and forget it, enjoy ham radio kind of antenna.
K9COX Rating: 2003-10-19
Good Multiband Ant Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had this up for three years now in a flat top configuration at 40 feet. Very effective multiband antenna. I have found that on 75 meters it is equal to a standard dipole, as would be expected. I have turned the antenna switch many times to be sure. The performance on 20 meters is great, much better than a vertical (AV-640), 40 meters seems to very good, and the rest of the bands is about par to a little worse than with a vertical on most paths. On 60 meters I did find a dipole to be better. Again, seems to really radiate well on 20 meters.
N8ERM Rating: 2003-09-09
Poor excuse for an antenna Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I had this antenna up for 6 months. I found that the product quality was poor. The balun burnt up with just 100 watts of power and 2 hours max tx time. I wrote the company and did not recieved a reply. called on the phone and was put on hold. after 10 seconds the line hung up. I called agin and started to explain my problem and they hung up on me. Shame on them!!!
KG4DKY Rating: 2003-07-05
very good product ***** Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I had been using a g5rv and replaced it after reading reviews. antenna came with great instructions and alot of info about wires and baluns installed per instructions at 40 ft flat top . recieves and transmits great on all bands with great signal reports from all over . Works great with my icom 746. I would recomend this antenna to anyone who has trees to hang it in. after I got the antenna I was looking at their other models and noticed the 160 special being the same demintions as the cw 80, so I called to see if I could swap out the balun before I installed it and the guy asked me if I had amp and I don't and he said try it on 160 you may be suprised and I sure was the antenna loaded and worked ok not as good as 10-80 but it is only 134ft I was impressed!Fine job radio works!