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Reviews For: Antennex CWB1443 Wideband NMO Mount Antenna

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

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Review Summary For : Antennex CWB1443 Wideband NMO Mount Antenna
Reviews: 1MSRP:
Description:
Mobile NMO mount wideband VHF antenna.
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0011
K7WFR Rating: 2008-12-27
poor antenna workmanship Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I purchased a CWB1443 Antennex antenna from AES in Vegas on a trip there a few months ago. Upon arriving home, I installed in this place of a good working, low swr B1443 antenna expecting better performance in a wideband sense as I needed to cover MARS and the ham band and figured this antenna would do it better.
Well, the SWR on my analyzer was pinned above 3:1 across the band. I never hooked my transmitter to it. I contacted Antennex about the issue and they basically came back with the story it was all my fault and I did not have a big enough ground plane and a bunch of other non-sense. Remember, I replaced a perfectly good working B1443 antenna with this. And, keep in mind I've installed mobile antennas for a living during the IMTS mobile phone days and I'd guess I've installed a thousand NMO mounts back then. I gave up and the shipping and my time to return it to AES would cost me more than it's worth. And, being curious, I wanted to know why it did not work....at all.
So today, months later, I took the antenna apart, which was really easy. I found a 100pf capacitor not connected at one end. It had NEVER had solder on the one side that needed it. So I solder it in where it was suppose to be soldered and checked the antenna.
SWR was immediately down to 1.6:1 and would not go lower. Wideband? I don't think so. Sweeping this antenna with the analyzer verified how wide this antenna actually is. I find the lowest swr point and then move the frequency until I see an swr of 2.0:1 (above and below the lowest swr)which for me is absolute max I want to subject a transmitter to.
The CBW1443 showed a 2.0:1 low end to 2.0:1 high end of 7.26 Mhz.
The B1443 showed 10.38 Mhz! Now, this test is made from the same NMO mount on a Dodge Dakota, extended cab truck roof.
Also, during this test, the SWR low was 1.6:1 on the CBW1443 and the low on the B1443 was 1.2:1.

So, for this antenna, my test speaks very clearly to me on which antenna I kept on the truck! I bet you can guess which one.

Now, based on the email conversations I had with Antennex, they should not have canned me with their basic "you are a dumb idiot" responses. Their antenna was defective out of the box and it should have been obvious to anyone technically qualified in the field.
Anyway...buyer beware....this model antenna appears to be snake oil, IMHO.
I gave this a "1" rating based on a antenna that; A. Would have NEVER passed a QC test of any kind.
B. Would have NEVER passed a visual QC test as it was immediately obvious what was wrong the very first time I looked at it.
C. Performed worse than it's little brother in regards to being wideband as claimed.
D. Got a run around from the tech that I had communicated with from the factory.

So, a lemmon or snake oil. Either way, a waste of time and money for me.

Jim, K7WFR