Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: Cushcraft A430-11s

Category: Antennas: VHF/UHF+ Omnidirectional: verticals, mobile, etc

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : Cushcraft A430-11s
Reviews: 2MSRP: 100
Description:
430 to 435 mhz 11 element beam
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0023
N4DBM Rating: 2010-05-07
Pretty Good Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Had mine for nearly 20 years. The design hasn't changed much. I don't particularly like the SO-239 connector, I prefer, like many hams, a type-N for 440 MHz and beyond. Construction is a little on the cheaper side, you can tell the aluminum is kind of brittle and mostly made of pot metal. However, I give this a 4 in spite of the mechanical stuff because it does have good forward gain compared to test antennas, a pretty clean pattern and good match. I use mine for vertical polorization on an RF link. Like the other gentleman said about the quality, I did have a few bolts that didn't even have slots cut in them! And, it would be nice to see stainless bolts and hardware for a change. Overall, I'd recommend this antenna to a friend if you could buy it second-hand at a cheaper price.
WD8PTB Rating: 2006-05-31
many small problems Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The screws for the elements were to short. You could not start the nut and lock washer, you had to snug down the nut to compress the mast and then remove the nut and add the lock washer. The directions say to keep the matching rod parellel to the element. The pl259 bracket and the slider are different distances from the element so I'm not sure how I was supossed to do this. The directions say that any lenth of coax can be used. This is true but the SWR changes. SWR at 433.6 was good no matter what but I wanted to operate at 432.1. The band width had several peaks aand dips between 430 and 435. I was able to tune for 432.1 but when I changed coax lenth it changed.
I could not get them on the phone . Their answering machine say's they respond to Email in one day and phone calls in 3 days. I left a Email message last week including my Email and phone number and have not yet received a responce

I have built other antennas with no problem and have home brewed several vhf/uhf antennas so while I do not consider myself an Expert I am not a Novice antenna builder either. Don WD8PTB