| KD8IIC |
Rating:  |
2022-03-25 | |
| Real Good For More Than Just Top-Band! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
On radial fireld of burried coated fence and many many random length under sod radial wires plus a few 8' gnd rods. No Choke, no un-un. Tune with a MN2700.
Cut for 1812. Loads 30m FB without tuner. Loads efficiently on 15-20 and 40 with. Guyed using dacron string. Great Value in a vert! 72 / 73 Lane n8aft Ohio
|
|
| HB9IJC |
Rating: |
2021-11-30 | |
| Happy with the MA160V |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I have installed last spring 76 buried radials and mounted the MA160V for the winter. Tuned for CW at 1820 KHz. Z = 15 Ohms. Added an UNUN 12.5 Ohms to 50 Ohms and an RF Choke at the base of the antenna. SWR = 1.5, only 10KHz band width but with a tuner all band works fine for local and DX. Picture on my QRZ dot com page. |
|
| AK4R |
Rating: |
2020-12-31 | |
| MA-160V quick route to the Top Band |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| This antenna is one of the easiest routes to the top band. Of course the performance is limited by how short it is and dependent on one’s radial system. But, if you have wanted to get on 160 Meters quickly, this is a great option til you can put something up better. I have been meaning to for three years. 73, Steve, AK4R |
|
| CT7ANG |
Rating: |
2020-09-22 | |
| A Dxer's antenna |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
My last review was under my old call G0MMI. I am now CT7ANG and I have recently put up the MA-160v.
16 radials of which 6 are half-wave and the other 10 are 30'. Also a 1.1 home brewed balun. Its definitely a DXers antenna. Well made,easy to put together and a small footprint. Does it work...YES 107 countries logged in just a few months from USA,JA.AH7,ZL etc.A bit narrow banded but it works. Highly recommended for top-band DX. NOW>>>For a new review I lost the 160m in a storm along with the MA4050 and had to replace both antennas which has been taken over by MFJ. My review on the new MA-160 is very different. That same as my new replacement MA40/80m vertical Both of these antenna's is of bad quality since the take over by MFJ. The box for the MA160 was missing many parts which I chase around for in Portugal to replace. The fiber tubing was not cut correctly as its been molded or drilled off center along the whole length so the stringer assembly was out by at least 3 mil. I had to rebuild the tubing as when the stringer was conecte it split the tubing, and I had to redrill a new hole to hold then inplace. I then had to re-enforce it with araldite and re drill the tube to take the stringer. MFJ have screwed an otherwise very good ant by cutting corners with quality control. Bloody shame on you t MFJ as its a great antenna but you have to fix it first from new!!! Once repiares where completed again the MA160 works well for DXI have and MFJ 989C tuner for topband and t works well so this is not sour grapes but when a DXer buys antennas of so called poor quality then he has good reason to give a low score. |
|
| N4MIT |
Rating: |
2018-05-20 | |
| Works well |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
Bare in mind what the antenna is... a short vertical for 160m. It works quite well for what it is. I worked 40 states the first night with it and some DX (it wasn't even a contest). I need more radials but with just the 8 radials that I have, it worked better than I had expected. If you are looking for a easy way to get on 160 while the sunspots are low, I would recommend the MA160v.
When I grow up I'll have a full size 160m vertical, until then I'll keep my MA160v. |
|
| K8TS |
Rating: |
2016-03-02 | |
| Not What I Expected |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Expations were a small footprint 160 antenna that could be used for DX. Concept for back yard (city) 160 antenna. All parts there.
Complanit is that Cushcraft is mentally challenged at writing manuals. Tubing was not well marked and even required calling the vendor to ascertain wheither a section was right or upside down. Don't know how it got out, but did not receive well. What you can't hear, you can't work. Reading lots of good review here, so maybe me. Manual: found the same problems with a MA5B. |
|
| K5AF |
Rating: |
2015-03-15 | |
| Steathly and Flexible Design |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
Being in a covenant restricted neighborhood, I had to build a wire variant of this antenna. I have tall trees with foliage that hides the capacitive hat and the stinger portions of the antenna, and have branches available to hang the antenna from, but the aluminum mast portion had to be replaced with a black pvc-coated piece of #12 wire to make the antenna less noticeable.
I had a nylon rope going through a pulley at about 28 ft, and I was able to cable tie the lower portion of the stinger to the rope so that it stuck up vertically through the treetops. Flat black paint made it almost unnoticeable.
I still fell a little short of the recommended height for the antenna, so I added a bit of inductance at first and it seemed to work well. I put down about 10 30' radials, which is all I had the space for.
I remembered from experience that placing a perimeter wire around the hat assembly would lower the frequency significantly, and the electrically-larger hat would also increase the bandwidth. I did this and was able to lower the resonant frequency by about 40kHz and eliminate the coil. A tuner at the base allowed me to cover the whole band.
I was surprised at the performance of this short antenna. First QSO was a VE3, with an S8 report, not bad from S. Texas at 100W. Performance equalled my low dipole on near-in stations, but exceeded it on QSOs of 1000 miles or more.
Unfortunately, I had a complaint from a neighbor about "all the wires in my yard", so I removed the most obvious ones and this was first on the list, so I really was not able to give it an exhaustive trial.
The good news is that this antenna is a very flexible design. If you have vertical space to make mast portion taller overall, you can adjust the stinger down a bit to compensate. If you need to shorten the lower mast section, you can adjust the stinger, add a perimeter wire around the top hat, add a small amount of inductance at the base, or do combinations of all, with little observed change in the basic performance.
My full-sized stealth inverted L outperformed the MA160V, otherwise it would have earned a "5" rating, but the evaluation may be somewhat tainted due to the limited radial system and the lack of long-term data. As they say, YMMV.
|
|
| Arthur M. Blank |
Rating: |
2013-03-12 | |
| Excellent Antenna |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
For a compact antenna, the MA160V out performs my expectations in most areas. With an antenna tuner, I have played successfully on all the other bands. Worked Spratly, Clipperton, etc. thru pileups. I purchased 2- 65 ft radial kits from DX Engineering so I have 40 radials out.
on 160 meters, the antenna does not hear as well as I had hoped but I have worked into South America and the caribbean fairly easily. If you own a small lot, this antenna is your answer. |
|
| N1TX |
Rating: |
2011-10-18 | |
| Easy assembly, affordable, effective |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
First QSO out of the box from Fairbanks, Alaska, was T32C!
I was pleased to see a decent 1.1:1 match after simply following the manual for installation. All those "for most installation" qualifiers you find for a lot of products leave me cynical. Dan KL1JP did much of the pre-assembly and then brought the bigger pieces over to screw together and erect on a tiltable mount he made some time back for a previous (and failed) installation of a short vertical for Top Band. The location was adjacent to several large spruce and poplar trees near the edge of my septic field. I promised him I would get the radials out before snow fell, and I did. Barely.
Dan built a wooden "shoe" to place in the ground and serves as an inexpensive tilt mount. A carriage bolt through the antenna base and two wooden vertical supports provides the pivot point, so there is no direct metal connection between the base and the ground. A 1.5" OD steel pipe is driven next to the wooden "shoe", and a jumper from the radial plate connects to the pipe, secured with a hose clamp. The manual talks about initially laying out three radials 20-50 feet long. I chose 50 feet, spaced them about 120 degrees. After connecting the wires to the radial plate, I took some cheap metal tent stakes and anchored the radial wires several inches from the base and again at the very ends, so they laid relatively flat. To connect the coax, I used a female panel mount SO-239. I soldered an 8" piece of wire to the center conductor cup on the back side of the SO-239 and secured it further by using about 2" of shrink tubing to prevent a lot of stress on the center pin. I looped one end of the other wire through one of the screw holes on the panel mount connector and soldered it, then attached both wires to their respective feed points near the bottom of the antenna. I was then able to make a current choke with about 4 loops of RG213, attached the PL-259 to the femal SO-239, covered both with Coax Seal. Voila!
The best VSWR (1.1:1) was at around 1860. The book says to add more radials 25-40 ft long and watch the VSWR come down to 1:1, but I decided to leave well enough alone for now. Also, I thought about adjusting the stinger to bring the tuning down to around 1840 kHz. Before I could do that, a lot of wet snow fell, which brought the tuning down in frequency anyway. For the "enhanced" radial system, the manual says to lay out 16-64 radials of 50-60 feet. Maybe in the spring.
|
|
| KY6R |
Rating: |
2011-03-01 | |
| After 8 months |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I have been really amazed at how well this short antenna works - and is even pretty darn good on receive.
I have easily worked into VK/ZL, Oceania, Asia, South America and Central America as well as the Caribbean. (I know anecdotal lists of who you worked doesn't say much about an antenna . . . . ).
This means - enough places from the West Coast to get to DXCC on 160M, which will net me 9BDXCC when this is done., and which is my goal.
With a tuner, it also works well on many other bands. |
|
