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Reviews For: Force 12 5BA

Category: Antennas: HF: Yagi, Quad, Rotary dipole, LPDA

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Review Summary For : Force 12 5BA
Reviews: 3MSRP: 2369
Description:
5 band yagi
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.force12inc.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0035
N9RD Rating: 2015-07-12
Best Yagi I have used. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
About 18-20 Years ago when Tom Schiller and his Dad worked out of a garage I purchased my 5BA. Put it up on a 60 foot tower and worked all the DX I wanted. It is well designed and still performs great to this day. Some rivets are a little loose and my 15m reflector has a slight bend near the outside of the element. However it does not affect the performance. The first thing to go was the boom support truss which was made from galvanized cable. In the future I would use SS aircraft cable or Phyllistran.
Since the antenna is too high to fix it I just supported the boom from below with 1/2" conduit and a PVC fork ( see my QRZ page). On 20m, 17m and 15m the antenna works great.
On 12m and 10m the antenna has less active elements therefore the performance is weaker and it will help to have good conditions.
Like I said the antenna is up for 18 to 20 Years with Galvanized hardware and I am ready to move it to my new 72ft US Tower crank-up.
At this time I will do some maintenance, replace all rusted U bolts, loose rivets and whatever else I find once it is on the ground.
The 5BA that I have is probably one of the first few ever made and has been revised over the years.
It is hard to make a good antenna better. Years ago I had a 4 element 40m KLM 15 feet below and was forced to turn the antennas 90 degrees from each other to be able to work on 15m with the 5BA.
I am very glad that I purchased it back then for about $1000 !
7Z1CQ Rating: 2010-06-11
UPDATE Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I installed this type of antenna
The rate of gain is better comparing to log periodic.
The beautiful thing is you can install another antenna above it as stack.
I have installed the Delta-240 from force 12 in top of it, and the distance between was 6 feet at less and there is no RF.
The price is little high $ 1,999.00 comparing to other antenna.
http://www.texasantennas.com/
VE7DXQ Rating: 2000-03-08
If your wanting for a big multibander, look no fur Time Owned: unknown months.
I just put up my 5ba this weekend,this is a big
antenna . 15 elements on a 33ft. boom ,imagine 5
monobanders interlaced on one boom.(10 12 15 17 20)
First noted was the SWR plots , 1:5:1 at the extreme band edges,below the f12 specs.
Performance on 20 metres equals my Hygain 204ba,( 4 el monobander) with a slight edge in FB. ratio in favour of the 204ba, but that is to be expected!
On the other bands it performs amazingly well!
Imagine stacking a pair of these, mmmmmm.
Assembly of all f12 antennas are so simple with a minimal parts count, however there was 200 +
pop-rivets to install , a bit tiresome on the fingers but it sure beats those hoseclamps.
Before raising the antenna make sure the elements are in the correct order, all 15 of them.
The 5ba is similar to the well known Hygain th11dx.
Topped off with a rotatable 40 meter f12 dipole stacked 7 ft.above the 5ba I'm a very happy customer.