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Reviews For: SARK100 Antenna Analyzer Kit

Category: Antenna Analyzers

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Review Summary For : SARK100 Antenna Analyzer Kit
Reviews: 18MSRP: 185€ Including shipping
Description:
The SARK100 Antenna Analyzer it is yet another antenna analyzer but available in kit form and designed to be easy to assemble and with an affordable pricing. The kit consist of a double sided printed circuit board with silkscreen and solder mask, the components including the pre-programmed PSoC microcontroller, welding supplies, and a suitable instrument box in grey color (supplied without machining).
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.ea4frb.eu/sark100.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00183.3
K9LLK Rating: 2015-09-29
Defective from the start Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought one of the pre-built Sark-100 units on eBay. It arrived from China in a wad of bubble wrap. No box. No owner's manual. I contacted the seller for instructions and he provided me with a link - for instructions written in Chinese.

I opened the battery compartment only to discover a red and a black wire just cut off. I had to go out and buy battery holders before I could use the Sark-100, adding to the cost.

Once installed, I attempted to use the analyzer. When it worked, the readings were always way off. A lot of the time, the display just read "Error Vf Level".

I finally sold it for a fraction of what I had in it to a ham with an electronics background and diagnostic equipment. He discovered that the RF chip was bad - right from the manufacturer. (He figured that it was going to cost ~$20 plus his expert time to repair.)

It's a crap shoot with regard to whether you will get a working unit. There was no warranty. It was cost prohibitive to exercise PayPal's buyer protection and return the unit to China at my expense.

My brand new Sark 100 was unusable junk.
SM6WHY Rating: 2015-07-30
A great antenna analyzer. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
As many others I bought a SARK-100 on EBAY. Regardless of what other people say I think it is a great analyzer. I have tested antennas and tuners, and with a good result. However I missed the possibility to see a graph and to save data for later, so I did a Pc program for this unit. It is a simple program but I think many users of the SARK-100 can have use for it.
You can find it here: http://www.sm6why.n.nu/SARK-100

73de SM6WHY
KG5RJS Rating: 2015-06-20
Dead Accurate out of the box Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Maybe I got lucky. There are some calibration instructions in the manual, but mine seems to be dead-on accurate out of the box.

I first tuned my antenna using my LDG auto-tuner. I then disconnected the auto tuner from the radio and plugged the tuner into the SARK 100 and ran a scan. It zeroed in on the 1:1 SWR at the correct frequency through the tuner.

This unit can scan through the band, and tell you the total bandwidth between 2.0 SWR points, and also provides impedance, reactance, and capacitance measurements. Very helpful for calculating loss and overall antenna system efficiency. This is a much better overall unit than the MFG meters at this price point.

Again, I may have just gotten lucky with my particular unit, judging from some of the other reviews perhaps the manufacturing quality isn't very consistent. This was a prebuilt grey color model from eBay shipped direct from china.
KD7RDZI2 Rating: 2014-10-04
Do buy Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this on eBay. The unit, called Mini60, was for a Bluetooth connection. It was advertised to work this way and it did it. It does work with the USB cable too, which is also used to charge the internal battery.

Over the internet some have reported issues on the output frequency, the USB or the bluetooth connection. Some recent youtube videos convinced me these production issues could have been solved. So I took the risk and very pleased now. Learning curve is immediate. Connecting with a computer is a plus, I even connected it to a virtual Android machine but... PCC-SARK100 and Zplots, with the Mini60 connected either via bluetooth or USB cable, give much more information.

So, DO buy this unit!!! It is too well designed.
K9YEQ Rating: 2014-05-29
Do NOT buy Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought this on eBay. The unit was for a Bluetooth connection with an Android device. It was advertised to work this way, but it did not.

No problem, I will work with the vendor who seemed very willing to fix the problem. They strung me along just enough that eBay will no longer back my purchase even though they read the messages where the seller offered to send me a replacement unit unconditionally!

Eventually I returned the device to the provided address as requested by the vendor for a replacement. They claim not to have received it? Originally I asked them to send a prepaid shipping carton. Their response was to just send it in.

Over the couple of months I had the unit, we actively worked together to fix their software issues... which never got corrected. The amount of time I spent helping this vendor to improve the functionality and usability of the device was more than 30 hours; no small monetary afair.
While the eBay rating is very good for this vendor their units and service are below words to be usedfor this review.

The seller dragged out this issue beyond the eBay "Guarantee". So much for eBay and PayPal; and neither of them, even after reading the messages between me and the vendor will do anything, because of their "rules and timelines" despite this being a legal claim against the Chinese vendor and them. Do not buy this unit!!! It is poorly designed.
WP4MLX Rating: 2013-07-25
very accurate and good price Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Hi

There are a few sark100 versions out there on ebay. The big one that looks like the original (price is around $95). There are a lot of complains with that unit so avoid them.

I own 2 MINI60 (MA60-X1) (I paid $108 +s/h for the first one and the price jumped to $138 + s/h for the second one) and they are very good units and the construction is very very good. The readings are very accurate compared to MFJ units and the ability to export data to excel is a great feature.

This unit is a great tools for any ham radio operator at home, at the field or for any amateur antenna biulder like me.

It is a good buy. 73!

KB9MIE Rating: 2013-06-30
Works well. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This review is for the MINI60 Sark 100 derivative, manufactured in China by Xuxu studio.
Using my station antenna I compared the results from the MINI60 with my LP-100 vector wattmeter with the following results.

Frequency MINI60 LP-100
14.10; 1.24 37+j0; 1.47 34+j1
18.10; 1.07 52+j0; 1.05 48+j2
21.00; 1.18 31+j0; 1.41 36+j0
24.90; 1.29 65+j0; 1.19 61+j2
29.00; 2.38 35-j35; 2.42 38-j38

As an additional test I placed two paralleled quality 50 ohm loads to give a 25 ohm load at the end of 25 feet of unused LD4-50 Heliax. This gives a variety of impedances at the source end depending on frequency. These are calculated using transmission line programs. The following gives the theoretical and measured impedances.

Frequency Calculated MINI60 LP-100
1.80; 2.00 27+j12; 1.73 29+j0 ; 1.82 28+j10
3.70; 2.00 35+j26; 1.79 37+j23 ; 2.07 31+j23
14.10; 1.98 32-j22; 1.81 32-j16 ; 1.93 31-j19
18.10; 1.98 26+j5 ; 1.73 27+j0 ; 2.01 24+j6
21.00; 1.98 36+j25; 1.78 40+j24; 1.85 35+j22
24.90; 1.97 89+j24; 1.92 97+j0 ; 1.97 35+j20
29.00; 1.97 55-j36; 1.86 47-j32; 1.92 52-j34

The results show that the MINI60 is reasonably accurate especially for the real antenna situation. For a wider range of impedances it showed a few anomalies not shared by the LP-100. My overall rating is a 4.
KK6CX Rating: 2013-04-16
Now available fully assembled Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
(Updated) Today I received my SARK 100 antenna analyzer (fully assembled and ready to use). I got it through eBay, the cost was around $110 US and it arrived from China in about two weeks.

I gave it a quick once-over on the 10 meter band. I'm not very proficient with the device yet but was able to determine the resonant frequency of my 10m antenna. It is a horizontal 45 degree V dipole, meaning it has two legs, each a quarter wavelength, arranged at a right angle with the feedpoint at the same height as the ends. It is fed unbalanced with RG-58 coax. With the SARK 100, I was able to scan the 10m band and determine that the SWR at resonance (28.430 MHz) was 1.03:1 and the impedance (Z) was 38 ohms with no j-factor. I stepped the stored values to the high end of the band (29.700 MHz) and determined that the SWR was 1.96:1 and the Z was 42 +j30 ohms. At the low end (28.000 MHz) the SWR was 1.18:1 with a Z of 58 j0 ohms. The SWR was flat enough to work the entire 10m band without a tuner...although one would help at the high end.

Just this brief test without studying the user manual (which will be sent from China by email on request) gave me much more data than I've had on any other antenna I've ever built.

Eli, VE2DJ, tells me the correct cable to connect the SARK 100 to a computer is USB CABLE AM MINI USB 5 PIN AM 1.5M

I'll try to update this review as I get more proficient with the analyzer.