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Reviews For: Hy-Gain AV-640 Eight-Band Vertical

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : Hy-Gain AV-640 Eight-Band Vertical
Reviews: 70MSRP: 449.99
Description:
Hy-Gain 8-band Vertical 40/30/20/17/15/12/10/6M
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.hy-gain.com/Product.php?productid=AV-640
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
15704.2
UY7CW Rating: 2009-10-30
Hy-Gain/MFJ do not read eHAM Product reviews Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Well,well,well. Shame on me. I bought my AV640 a couple of days ago thinking that problems described by other people won´t touch me... because my MFJ259B works just fine. MISTAKE! To begin with, one detail is missing and I can not start assembling the antena. The quality is very regular and it seems that those who made this antenna(at least mine)are people who know very little about drilling,cutting etc. The reason I gave it a "3" and not "2" is because I still hope it would work when I have the missing part here. AND, it seems that nobody of MFJ/Hy-Gain crew knows abt existing of this beautiful Product Reviews page:( for there are no improvements in their products. Are we all spitting against the wind?
NJ1T Rating: 2009-10-30
RIP Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I finally KILLED this antenna and now use the aluminum to support a 20 meter dipole.
I kept 'tweaking ' to get a LOW SWR
on 40-30-20-17-15 but the design wouldn't let me
go that low (especially on 15) I tried adding tuned radials but finally gave up on it. NOT the fault of the Antenna!!!
Read all the reviews If you are OK with a 3-1 SWR and want the 'middle' of CW bands or the 'middle'
of SSB band .. it really works well. I'm sorry to say I killed it by over tweaking .. I'm Guilty!
G3TEX Rating: 2009-10-02
Dry joints but now working Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I recently bought mine and carefully assembled it using NoAlOx between the metal parts. There was a high (>25) SWR everywhere which I traced to a dry joint in the match box. The coax inner went nowhere. It now works fine but is rather noisy since it's about 4m from the house. Stronger reports than my very old and worn Butternut. There were a couple of screws missing but lots of spares of other things. I'd suggest not mounting the counterpoise rods until the antenna is in place; it makes it much easier to handle. Mines at 10m and guyed with nylon string against the Tramontane northerly winds we get in medditerranean France. Not worked much yet but 2S points down on 20m to Scotland compared with Spiderbeam - to be expected. Looking forward to working some 40m DX and waiting for 6m to be allowed in this part of France.
73s Philip
AF6AZ Rating: 2009-03-19
very good Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
My G5RV wasn't good enough for me so I went with the 640 to put on top of a 50ft mast that had a tri-band beam at the 40ft level. At first I expected it to resonate without a tuner, but such was NOT the case. The mast is 150 feet from the feed point with LMR600 feed line. Both antenna are connected to a Ameritron relay box with LMR600 line.

I experienced a lot of QRM therefore I put up a double bazooka cut for 75 meters. After months of use I took down the bazooka. The difference between it and the 640 wasn't enough to justify the bazooka and it's interference with the rotating mast.

Putting the 640 together took 2-3 days and an email about one of the measurements in assembly instructions. There were plenty of spares in the package and I needed them. My best advise is read carefully and take your time to get it right the first time. I goofed on a couple of things, but it wasn't too hard to correct.

A friend has an analyzer and we tested all bands before and after putting it on the mast, trimming the top hat elements to maximize the SWR. After a couple of rounds of this with it on the mast I gave up and just use the tuner. With no linear I've worked the central states on 80 meters, and that's good enough for me. I do recommend these stick, but glad I am that the beam is there waiting for the day when 20 meters comes back.

It sways in the wind quite a bit, but so far so good.
W1DQ Rating: 2008-08-01
It works fine and much better than Cushcraft. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
No sense telling what a disaster the Cushcraft R7000 was, just read the eHam reviews, it couldn’t take power nor could one adjust the SWR sufficiently well. I finally got fed up with mine and decided to replace it, so did Cushcraft. I considered purchasing their new R8, but sorry, it still has a trap of the same design and I am not going to take another chance, especially at its higher price.

I decided to acquire a Hy-Gain AV-640 and I am really pleased that I did. It directly replaced the R7000 with no installation modifications. It was easy to separately adjust the SWR to the frequencies that I wanted and with no multi-band compromises. It takes full power flawlessly. It is a bit more labor intensive to assemble but all the parts were there and the instruction manual was straightforward plus it hardly needed any adjustment.
KC2NIN Rating: 2008-03-25
Works Great as advertised Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Assembly is easy once you look at the manual carefully.
SWR performance is exactly as advertised assuming no assembly mistakes.
On-Air performance is very good, works much better than my 40-10 meter Windom and other wire antennas, not a beam but if you can hear them you will work them even with 100 watts.
Mine is 16 feet high and 20 feet from the house and have no noise or SWR issues.

N2RGA Rating: 2007-04-06
Missing Parts O YA Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I figured I will buy a brand new antenna since I was taking the General Test soon and didn't want someone else's head ache.
I received the antenna from AES with in a few days.

Part One

Start putting the antenna together for install the next day and GUESS WHAT? Missing parts!!! They forgot to include the 72" reflector and instead of a smaller bolt they gave me a bigger one. Called up Hy-gain and told them of my problem after asking me where did you buy it he asked what parts I was missing and told him and after a week they shipped them out via UPS.

Part two
Put up antenna, checked it with a MFJ antenna analyzer and 40 meters is a little high everything else is 1.1, 1.3, I didn't want to take it down again to adjust it so I will have to use the AT-200 I bought also no Big deal.

The reason I rated it a 3 out of 5 is because of missing parts.

I will update in a few more months on how I like the antenna.


KC2G Rating: 2007-03-30
Takes a licking Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This antenna was mounted on an 8', 2" diameter heavy-walled galvanized steel pipe. Here in the Ozarks we experienced a severe ice storm (of the century) in January 2007. Of course the counter-poises drooped and looked like a weeping cherry tree, and the entire antenna curved a bit, away from the wind.

However, the antenna survived, fully, until the galvanized pipe gave out and bent under the ice and wind! That's right...the antenna was OK, the galvanized pipe bent. I too felt the 10" mount was too flimsy, but tht joint was fine.

Sadly, the 17 meter element and some of the matching stubs were destroyed when the pipe bent, but for $50 or so, I'll have it back on the air. This time the mount is 17 feet high...4" diameter pipe to a hinged mount, and another 9 feet above that. I'm not worried about the pipe bending this time.

My only regret...I had hoped Hy-Gain would replace the few parts gratis, just because of what this baby survived, but no such luck. Hey, you can't blame me for asking!
9G5ZS Rating: 2006-11-24
9G5ZS - 4.5/5 Design. 5/5 for performance Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The AV640 was recommended by a friend and was surprised to find it also resonates on 3510 & 3797.. with tuning of course. But full pwr.
Is there anybody out there that have experience the same ? Any advise for 80M operation?
Emil
K9TTE Rating: 2006-03-16
Good News/Bad News Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
On the positive side Hy-Gain did a good job of expediting the order to me quickly. The antenna arrived properly with no damage or parts missing. Also, it works fine, at least backed up by an LDG Autotuner, and I have had good DX contacts on 15-40m on both ends of the band (assembled for band center). On the disappointing side, the parts quality left room for improvement and I spent considerable time deburring plastic and metal parts before assembly. Some holes did not line up no matter what orientation in contrast to some reviewer's experiences. Any time I have to pull out the drill to complete assembly it draws a red flag. The match box is not sealed and looks like a potential rain guage. Finally, the feed from the match box to the antenna base was easily broken during final assembly and was replaced with a more substantial copper wire from an odd piece of 12/2 electrical wire. The product didn't leave me with the impression that quality was a big concern in Starksville and I've heard the same from retailers on other product lines made there. Makes you wonder where quality ranks or whether this product line is just a cash cow.