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Reviews For: Diamond A144S5 2M Yagi

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

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Review Summary For : Diamond A144S5 2M Yagi
Reviews: 14MSRP: 59
Description:
Base Station Yagi Beam - Special Features:
+ High Gain
+ Easy Assembly
+ Great for base or portable use.
+ Quality Construction
+ Factory adjusted - no tuning required.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.rfparts.com/diamond/a144s5.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00144.1
WV1K Rating: 2007-12-19
Excellent for its intended uses Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'm surprised by the low reviews. This antenna is meant to be portable, balcony or attic mounted. I don't think inclusion of 3 inches of Coax Seal is a sign to slap an antenna with wing nuts and plastic wherever. Reminds me of the Yaesu FT-2000 reviews that say it doesn't resist flooding like the VX-170 does and that it's not as useful for ARES as the VX-170...



I didn't think anyone would mount an antenna with wing nuts at 80 feet on a tower.

That being said, this is great for the attic where I have mine. Repeaters 80 miles away are, of course, full scale whereas they might be half scale on my Diamond X-30 vertical which is 10 feet higher.

I have mine vertical on a metal Channel Master mast at 15 feet; it came drilled for either polarization. Maybe they added that recently as mine shipped in a box not the bag it used to ship in.

The SWR is flat with no adjustment.

Fed with LMR-400 I'm glad I did this for 50 bucks rather than giving any more money to a CA company that told me "we can't create a custom replacement base for your custom 80m quarter wave because it was a custom job."

WHAT !?

AE1Y Rating: 2007-01-05
Nice antenna Poor workmanship Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I have had this antenna for 6 months. I was using a mobile radio as a base and I had no means to measure anything about the antenna. I recently upgraded to a Kenwood TS-2000. WOW what a nice rig!!!!!!!! Thats another review. I started measuring A/B performance between the beam and my X-50 vertical. The X-50 out preformed the beam in all aspects!! I tried different coax, mounting positions ect... nothing!! I could not figure out why this antenna was not performing. This antenna is very simple no traps coils ect.. Or so I thought! I figured there must be a short somewhere inside the black box on the hot stick. The box is riveted shut so I had to drill out the rivets. Diamond uses a 2 foot piece of coax as an inductance coiled up inside this black box. I had to get a 10x glass to inspect the tiny wiring. The braid of the coax is soldered together at each end and then soldered to the S0-239 ground the center wire is soldered to the + side and to both of the stubs. What happened was when the worker soldered the braid they hit the center wire burning of the insulation causing a short. I fixed the short now I have to go out to get new bolts to replace the rivets and remount the antenna. I will let you know how I make out
2E0MCA Rating: 2006-10-11
Great value antenna for 2m SSB. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I purchased the Diamond A144S5 because I needed a small 2 metre Yagi for the SOTA and WAB programs in the UK . The price looked good, £30 in the UK, as did the specification, 9db gain from 5 elements on a boom less than a metre in length.

The antenna comes in standard Diamond packaging. I was very pleased to find that it was almost totally pre assembled, which is just as well as the instructions were in Japanese. It was simply a matter of swinging the elements round to 90 degrees, correctly locating their centres over the central beam and tightening the wing nuts. There are clearly marked notches to assist in this. The driven element is fitted to the pre located wing screw and you are ready to go. The A144S5 is made entirely of circular tubing including the central beam which should reduce the wind loading.

I intended to use the antenna horizontally, so I did not have to consider using a stub pole to mount it away from the main mast. The antenna is really light, which made it easy for me to handle it on one of those darn fangled ladder thingies. After connecting up I tested it on 144.300 SSB and 145.500 FM. In both cases the SWR was excellent with barely a twitch of the needles, my Co-Linear shows up as 1.2:1 on 144.300 SSB, so there is nothing wrong with the meter!

My first contact, in flat conditions, was with a station in Chepstow, over 100 miles away. In the six weeks since I put it into service I have worked stations in Cumbria, who were running 10W or less, on SOTA activations at a distance of around 250 miles, so it is doing what I bought it for. I have also worked stations in France and Germany. Given the ease of assembly, with everything held together by wing nuts, and its size and lightness, I think it could be a good antenna for SOTA activators who want to take a beam up the mountain with them!

The previous reviewers comments regards mounting it vertically should be considered if that is your intention. As for the reported SWR problem, I can only assume that it was damaged in transit or somehow got past the pre-adjustment procedure at Diamond.

As for me, I reckon the antenna represents excellent value for money and I give it 5 out of 5.
KI4MYD Rating: 2006-04-02
Spend the extra. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Well when I got the beam it looked like an amazing product. Very versatile, came in the signature Diamond yellow/clear plastic case. All elements other than the driven element were pre-attached so all that was needed was to loosen the wing nuts on the boom and turn the elements to where they were perpendicular to the boom, and slide them to where they're notched, then tighten back down. Attaching the driven element was as simple as laying it on top of the boom and securing one last wing nut. Assembly took roughly 2 minutes.

It's small and light, not a bad looking antenna really, should be easy for a rotor to turn. But it's not worth the money to even get it.

If you're going to use it verticle, you can't use a metal mast, you have to fabricate some wooden one unless you have fiberglass. If you don't want to do that, you HAVE to BUILD an extension that somehow perfectly fits inside the boom so it's adjustable out to 6". That was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. Plus it has to be mounted at the end, not in the center.

Yagi also has no stinger to adjust the SWR. I never could get them out of the 2.5 range in any portion of the band. There's nothing to tune to lower the SWR. I tried mounting it Flat, Verticle, and tried it on 3 different lengths/pieces of coax, nothing worked.

It's no wonder it's probably the cheapest Yagi out there. You could build one better than this for less.

I'm boxing it up and sending it back tomorrow. Don't waste your time or money on it.