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Reviews For: B&W Broadband Dipole

Category: Antennas: HF: Verticals; Wire; Loop

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Review Summary For : B&W Broadband Dipole
Reviews: 24MSRP: 279.95
Description:
Broadband Folded Dipoles
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.bwantennas.com/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00242.9
WB9JTK Rating: 2001-12-17
Great for what it is Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Have been using the AC3.5-30 version for 8 years. This antenna works quite well on 40 through 10 meters. SWR was high on 10m some places I lived due to surrounding objects. Does not work quite as well as a full size dipole on 80. B U T no tuner needed, one coax, no worries, no coax switch to select antennas. I think it is the perfect field day antenna. I sure recommend this over ANY G5RV for convienience. Have worked all over the planet with it.
WD4NGB Rating: 2000-04-02
High priced dummy load Time Owned: unknown months.
One of my jobs in my 22 years in the US Army was installing HF antennas systems around
the world. We did use the B&W folded dipoles, but only to give us a fast temp setup with
wide frequency coverage. These antennas are fine for single hop HF, but worthless for DX.
The B&W dipoles are in the area of 2 db above a dummy load for anything other single hop
communications.
W2ATO Rating: 2000-04-02
B&W Broadband Dipole ModelsAC-5-30 and BWD-1.8-30 Time Owned: unknown months.
Been licensed 51 years. I and friends had this antenna. It is very poor excuse for an antenna. Dummy loads have l:l SWR (or close to it) over wide range of frequencies. Compared to the standard dipole it is "out to lunch".
N3SKO Rating: 2000-04-02
Excellent No-tune antenna Time Owned: unknown months.
Yes, I know that the guys on the Antenna newsgroups swear that they don't work. We'll ignore
the fact that the military have installed hundreds of them... I have installed five of them here at
my station to support regional HF operations (I operate a regional MARS gateway station).

These antennas are a dream for NVIS operation, mounted low to the ground. Just be careful to
support them in the middle - the balun and terminating resistor are pretty heavy. Mounted in
an Inverted V configuration, they do quite well - I have been using this config for medium-haul
Automatic Link Establishment nets with good results. The Inverted V config also solves the
problem of supporting the balun and resistor.

I am very pleased with this antenna. Is it as good as a full-sized dipole, cut to frequency? No.
But it permits tuner-less operation over a wide frequency range, and offers reasonably good
performance.