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Reviews For: Hexbeam: G3TXQ by MW0JZE

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

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Review Summary For : Hexbeam: G3TXQ by MW0JZE
Reviews: 94MSRP: £475.00 + Shipping
Description:
Description: A six band broadband Hexagonal Beam Antenna designed by Steve G3TXQ and manufactured in the UK by Anthony MW0JZE. Comparable performance to a full size two element yagi on bands 20M – 6M with no tuner needed! Antenna is made in a pre-assembled form meaning a quite assembly time with no tuning involved, just assemble and mount to your mast. Full spec can be found on Anthony’s web site wwwg3txq-hexbeam.com Price £475 GBP plus shipping
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.g3txq-hexbeam.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
25945
9Q50ON Rating: 2011-06-02
Great expedition antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is a great antenna for dx expeditions. you can pack this antenna in a small ski-bag 1,50 meter long. Airlines have no problem with this minimal "out of ize luggage". Weight is also ok. You have to notice them 2 days before and say you have sports eqiuipment or fiching gear with you. Then you have super antenna on your dx expedition! build and ready in 45 minutes. As you already could read, performance is good on all bands. We had absolutely no problem to make world wide contacts with our hex beam.
IZ3LCI Rating: 2011-04-18
Bravo! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
About power handling:"Full legal power" without problems, much more for sure ...

I find it amazing! The antenna and its strengths in my opinion are:it's so quiet!, good gain and good F/B and F/S ratios, the small size and weight (small rotor and small tower = few bucks!! ... hihi!)

Note that you have 6 bands, with performances near to 2 el full size, no traps, no devilry RF eat or melts if you go out with 500 or more 'watts;-)

SWR perfect, the entire spectrum of all bands (1.5-1.6 maximum at the ends of the 20 meters ...)

I am sooo happy, and if I'll change it in the future will be only for a Ultrabeam at least (above all for 30 and 40 mtrs bands) ...

Has held a couple of storms this winter "bora wind" at 150/160 kmh without any problem.

The price seems adequate for the construction and performance.

One word ... Highly recommended in my opinion, if you want more performance you have to spend at least (but at least!) twice to increase the performance, in addition to greatly increase the weight and size, except maybe for Spiderbeam ... but it's bigger and not so strong in a base installation ...
Just my 2 cents!

Ah ... works very well since only 6 / 7 meters up!
Tnx es 73s de
IZ3LCI Angelo Venice IT
G4MKP Rating: 2011-03-30
Small Plot.....Big Performance Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I've tried every popular commercial mini-beam out there. Nothing comes close to this. My Hexbeam, manufactured for me by Anthony (MW0JZE) is at 31' at its highest point with a large tree only 3' away to the North East. Over the last few days alone I've bagged ZL,VK,FO,KH0,KH2, KH6, ZS.....the list goes on. My only Pacific QSOs pre Hexbeam were JA (rare) and KH6 (twice I think). VK/ZL/JA short path and long path now no problem. The key performance indicators for me are small footprint, excellent front to back and a low noise floor. Combined with the Elecraft K3 and the Expert 1K amp I can work them all. It's my main antenna this year for contesting.
CT1KCL Rating: 2011-01-20
great beam and 6 bands Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
After a life time of verticals I decided to go for the hex beam. The kit comes complete and everything fits with no problem whatsoever. The only problem I had with the 32m mm.only stub. It is hard to fit on most rotors. I solved it by using my own stub that goes in the center 48 mm/ 50 mm. SWR spot on I can sell my tuner.6 bands for a reasonable price. I work at 9 meters up only.
PD0RK Rating: 2010-12-04
It's good. I mean good. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I was looking for a rotatable multiband antenna. It should have 20M and 10M at least. So I ended up
having to choose between a 2 or 3 element tri-band Yagi or the Hexbeam. I chose for the Hex because it is a 6 bander, has 2 full-size elements for each band(no traps) and has limited weight for its capabilities.
Build quality is very good. Heavy duty fibre-glass spreaders, stainless steel and aluminium parts. It's really easy to put the Hex together. A manual is included, which helps. I have the Hex installed on my somewhat limited antenna pole of 12,5 meter in height. I measured SWR's on 20M of 1:1,5. On the other bands it was about 1:2,5 to 3.
I will have to trim the antenna to get that better.
My license (Novice) allows me to work on 20M and 10M. 10M were down so far. 20M however showed some good DX propagation during the time I've had the Hex up in the air. And WOW, does it work?! Yes.
Compared to my inverted-V, signals are so much stronger, 3-4 S points and more. I can work the real DX stuff now: ZS's, ZL's, VK's, W's, N's, YB's, BX's and HK's to name a few. Reports are good and more important: I can work what I can hear. I get about the same reports that other Ham's get who work with 3 element tri-banders.
So, if you're looking for a HF muli-band antenna, 20M-10M + 6M, be wise and consider this Hexbeam.
Anthony does a fine job in pre-assembling his Hexbeam. It's built to last!
G5XW Rating: 2010-11-30
Well made, good product Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Very pleased, like others about an hr to build, swr spot on, everything pre cut ready to fix, mines only up at 20 feet due to over hanging trees,& lay of the land here but perfomance is brilliant. VERY VERY pleased. Good service TNX JZE
M0URX Rating: 2010-10-20
Hexbeam performs! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
My first experience with the G3TXQ-Broad-Band Hexbeam was on an IOTA activity in 2009, I was really impressed with this antenna.
After the IOTA expedition I decided to buy one of the Hexbeams from Anthony MW0JZE. I got the antenna home, started to assemble it, which was very easy indeed. In under 1 hour the Hexbeam was assembled and then put on my Tennamast at 13m.

The Hexbeam has been up for well over a year at this time. I can report that the antenna works very well indeed on my small plot of land here. 6m, 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, and 20m SWR is under 1.3:1 on all bands and is low enough on all sections of the bands so if you are into CW DATA or SSB you will not need a ATU on any bands.

Performance I have noted is on a par with a friend near me that has a 2 element SteppIR. I often call in pile ups at the same time both using 400w and we both get pretty much the same reports (real reports not 59s I may add)

I highly recommend Anthony MW0JZE as the manufacturer and seller of the Hexbeam that I use. Anthony is very passionate about his work and his quality of service and Hexbeam parts are all excellent.
PA3BAT Rating: 2010-09-12
Very good construction Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Last week I received the Hexxbeam from Ant and I immediately started to put it together. The included manual was very helpful (photographs) and after two hours I had completed the assembly. I only mounted the 20m and 15m wires because the antenne will be used for portable use only. Connected the coax to my Icom-7000 and started to measure SWR. I was surprised that the SWR was really low on both bands altough I had the antenna mounted in the backgarden of my house about 3 feet above ground level! I was able to work Russian stations on PSK31 (my favorite mode) more that 3300 km away...and later on 15m a JA station also! It outperformed my G5RV even it was mounted so low the ground.
I can recommend this antenna because it is very well constructed and reasonably priced also.

Roel PA3BAT
MM0NDX Rating: 2010-08-10
IOTA expedition, EU-118 Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I was team leader of MS0INT IOTA expedition to EU-118 Flannan isles (as seen on the front cover of the August 2010 Radcom magazine) in June of this year.

Ant, MW0JZE very kindly offered to loan our group a G3TXQ Hexbeam for that activation, and are we glad he did! The antenna worked seemlessly, with DX after DX being logged constantly in the operating times we used it. We also used verticals and dipoles, but as you'd expect, the G3TXQ Hexbeam out-performed all of them, particularly when it came to working JA, KH6, KL7 etc.


Assembly of the antenna is straight-forward. This is mainly due to Ant's truly excellent colour coded, detailed instructions. Very easy to follow. After initial experimentation of assembly, it took us under 1 hour to erect, test and then CQ. SWR flat all bands.

In a review such as this, you always look for the positives and negatives. In truth, there are no negatives, not one. Positives? You will find out once you purchase one.

If interested in seeing images of our loaned G3TXQ Hexbeam in action, please contact me at QRZ.com email address.


Col, MM0NDX
OE3WHU Rating: 2010-06-18
Solid construction, Easy to build, Reasonable prize Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Got my broadband Hex by MW0JZE (design by G3TXQ) about 2 months ago and here´s the ..

MANAGEMENT ABSTRACT:
It´s absolutely worth the investment !
Solid manufacturing; Solid materiels used; Built it together on my own in about 2 hrs without any documentation (for mobile application doable in 3/4 Hrs or less);
Great performance compared to the simplicity of the design. Comparably close to "no windload"

DECISION HISTORY:
When i decided to be "ready for a beam now" (had only long wire and ICOM AH-4 tuner before) my first choice was the SteppIR, but quickly turned out that too many trees in the garden inhibit even building it together.
So the next investigation was about small beams. MA5B was a candidate, but when i saw the bandwith .. :-(
Finally the Hex design itself convinced me. Aha ! .. easy design, good documentation on the web --> let me build it on my own !
.. Well .. try to get all the stuff together in a quality that survives long time in cenral europe weather (rain, storm, ice). You can´t get the stuff together (including various shipping costs) for a reasonable price significantly better than this kit.
Decision Items: 6 bands, reasonable price, solid construction, no overseas shipping costs, direct contact to the manufacturer ...
All reasons to buy came true !

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS:
All spreaders (each consists of 3 parts fitting into each other, supported by extra aluminium rings to avoid breaking on the ends.
Almost nothing to screw down, so it´s built up very quickly. Isolated wire used. Strong but lightweight Kevlar ropes used. Sealed -ready to use- center pole with cables inside.
Just the plastic clamps which hold the antenna wires on the spreaders have to prove if they are good enough to survive several summers/winters. I´d preferred stainless steel parts. But i´m sure Ant´ will supply replacements if this turns out to be a point of weakness.
It weights about 11kg, so you don´t need a heavy rotor. Under stormy conditions even my long wire moves around more.

PERFORMANCE:
As reviewers always report relative to their comparison capabilities, here are the EZNEC results of the broadband Hex design by G3TXQ used by MW0JZE.
Band; Peak Gain(dBi); Peak Front/Back(dB)
20; 5.5; 26
17; 5.3; 21
15; 4.7; 17
12; 4.3; 14
10; 4.9; 14
6 ; 4.8; 11

The SWR (even at test hight of 6.5 meters over ground) was between 1:1.1 and 1:1.6 over the full bands.
My reports have significantly improved, i´m able to compete in pile up´s, made a lot of new countries (all that compared to my "long wire")

CONCLUSION:
A beam is always better than a wire. If you don´t have too much space for antennas and/or you do not want to spend too much money
on the step from the simple antenna to the beam (which includes mast, rotor, etc) a Hex in general is the right choice. And Ant´s
mechanical construction vs. costs convinces me at the moment (will follow up after one year and all kinds of challenging weather)

:-) Wolfgang (OE3WHU)