| G1OHT |
Rating:  |
2023-09-13 | |
| Excellent value-quality product |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have recently decided to re-ignite my interest in amateur radio and firstly installed a vertical hf antenna, I quickly realised the limitations and looked around for a directional antenna with low visual impact, I bought the Dual Beam Pro. The antenna went togethger in a few minutesand was very well constructed. I have been very pleased with the results. The antenna sits just above the roof-line and is rotated using a small Yaesu rotator. Receive and transmit are both excellent, from my qth in the middle of town I can usually work what I can hear, I have made several contacts in Australia, Brazil, Argentina and the Falkland Islands. The internal tuner on my FT450at will tune up on all bands including 40mtrs, 80mtrs and 6mtrs.
Carl, the owner of the company was very helpful before and after purchase and I would thoroughly recommend this product to anyone looking for a good antenna that is not going to upset the neighbours or the XYL. |
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| VE8AP |
Rating: |
2020-08-19 | |
| A major surprise |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Well I thought i would update my review its up over a year now and i am still blown away by this little antenna. I have it on a tower now 40ft in the air and the same results keeping coming at me your rotatable dipole is doing remarkably well. I have had the pleasure to have had ten antennas up over the years everything from a delta loop to a A4S to a MQ26 and they all are great antennas. I just can't get over this little antenna and how light it is and zero wind load I use it on 10-20m only.
I have a rotatable dipole for 40m I am going to review as well. If you have limited space and are done with huge towers I would recommend the dual Beam pro I even posted a few Youtube videos of the Antenna working to VK land Thanks all Play safe and 73's |
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| W4KBX |
Rating: |
2015-05-12 | |
| Wonderful Surprise! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
My Dual Beam Pro "Multi-band Rotary HF Antenna" by Pro Antennas in Southampton, England has been operational for only a couple of days, and the first blush results are ALL positive, better than I expected, borderline spectacular.
The DBP is up a bit over 10 meters (33 feet) and I’m feeding it with about 22 meters (71 feet) of 400MAX coax, DX Engineering's improvement on LMR-400.
Carl Kidd, the designer and manufacturer, is very open and straightforward about the Dual Beam Pro. He makes it very clear that the raw DBP SWRs might be beyond the capabilities of some transceivers' internal antenna tuners, especially on 40 meters, and he recommends using a high-quality external tuner.
Raw (no tuner) SWR readings I took of the Dual Beam Pro were 3:1 on 10 meters, 2.5:1 on 12 meters, 2.4:1 on 15 meters, 2.5:1 on 17 meters, 3:1 on 20 meters, and off the scale on 40 meters.
My station consists of an Icom IC-7410 which I run at about 100 watts, an LDG AT-1000ProII tuner, and that’s essentially it.
I've bragged to all who would listen about my amazing inverted V and the phenomenal job it’s been doing -- and it truly has -- so that became my benchmark. I truly expected it to outshine the Dual Beam Pro at least half the time… but it didn’t.
In same-frequency A/B comparisons of the Dual Beam Pro and the inverted V on every band from 10 through 40 (except 11 and 30) the AT-1000ProII easily tuned the Dual Beam Pro to an SWR that was lower than or at least equal to that of my inverted V. In the majority of my comparisons my tuner was able to tune the DBP down to 1.0:1 to 1.2:1, even on parts of 40 meters which Carl admits is not the DBP's long suite. I was very pleasantly surprised.
Incoming signals are ALL stronger and louder on the DBP, and the signal reports I’m getting from all over the planet are making me just the slightest bit giddy.
From central Florida, during the first 36 hours:
10 Meters – Brazil, 5x9; Paraguay, 5x9
12 Meters, poor conditions – Anglesey Island off Wales, 5x7
15 Meters, poor conditions – France, 5x7; Isle of Man, 5x9
17 Meters – Spain, 5x9; Croatia, 5x9; Colombia, 5x9+; Venezuela, 5x8; Morocco, 5x9
20 Meters – Moscow, 5x9; Czech Republic, 5x9+10.
Haven't tried 40 yet.
I realize none of this is rare and precious, but for a first shot out of the box I’m impressed and delighted.
The Dual Beam Pro is so light, about 5.5 lb, and has so little surface area that a light-duty rotator such as I'm using is more than adequate.
Please, just a word or two about Carl Kidd, G4GTW. From the day I first e-mailed him for some details until, well, this morning to ask another question, Carl has always given me rapid and to-the-point response. His is the kind of customer service we wish the government would provide. |
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| 2E1MIB |
Rating: |
2015-03-07 | |
| Fantastic stealth antenna |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I Purchased the dual beam pro from Carl G4GTW after having installed and used one at a friends house, I spoke with my friend and he found this a fantastic antenna that fitted his purpose..
I was on the lookout for a beam as I already had a vertical, however it needed to be discreet for the neighbours and also the wife.. I looked at a few options but always came back to the dual beam pro!
After reading reviews online and also watching youtube videos I decided to go for it and purchase the antenna, it would be ideal for my location and also my purpose of primarily being for PSK31.
I emailed Carl and asked him to send me an invoice on paypal and that was returned promptly, I then paid and was greeted with an email saying that Carl would send out the following day, which he did and the antenna arrived within 24 hours of being sent.. the antenna was very well packaged and I was pleased to notice I had a newer version from my friend and checked the contents of the box and tube, its clear to see that Carl uses quality components to make this antenna, I quickly skimmed through the instructions but was already familiar with the build as I had fitted one at a friends house previously.
The installation went very well and was assembled and up in the air within 30-45 minutes, I also took note and had brand new coax of at least the recommended length, I then decided to flick through the bands and see where my TS-2000 would tune up the antenna, I found it tuned from 20 metres all the way through to 6 metres with no gaps which to me was fantastic, it does tune on 40 metres and upwards on an external tuner and seems to work well although Carl does state performance is down on 40 metres but I can live with that for my application..
I then moved on to actually using the antenna and found that within the first weekend of use I had made 61 contacts and had 33 dxcc's which I thought was a fantastic result for me as I only have a couple of hours a day to play radio, one noteable thing to mention is that I was now making frequent contacts into america and canada, also into Brazil and martinique... I was also pleased to work south africa for the first time all of these places being between a 5/7 and 5/9 and a massive improvement on my wire.. I spoke to america on 5 watts on voice.. that was a true test for me and blew me away tht this little 5 metre long rotary dipole was working so well.. if you look at it you instantly assume that it wont work, or it wont work well... but it just does, and I cant even explain why! but I have been more than impressed with its performance on both PSK31 and voice modes.
For a stealthy compromised antenna it is amazing, build quality is superb and the cost is pretty low too, I just think its a worthwhile purchase either as a main station antenna for the small gardens or a great second antenna for someone with space, no it wont beat a yagi but its nowhere near the size or price as one either.. I can not recommend this antenna highly enough, I tell nearly everyone I contact on the radio what I'm using and how well its working, if your sitting on the fence after your research and reading reviews then take my word for it and just buy it!!
Thanks to Carl for opening up the world to my station when I was resigned to working a wire forever!
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| G4ZII |
Rating: |
2015-02-09 | |
| 3 years on and still superb! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Bought my first Dual Beam Pro in 2011 just after the RSGB review and I was delighted, at last I found a neat design that enabled me to work the long haul DX and generally if I can hear it I can work it! I moved QTH and enquired about upgrading to the new specification, Carl requested I returned the old unit and he would do a free upgrade. I was a little apprehensive having read what turned out to be very misleading, Carl’s after sales service is second to none and my upgraded Dual Beam Pro is once again providing excellent performance and fingers crossed, not one neighbour complaint!
My old G5RV worked well but DX off the ends could rarely be worked and my old Cobwebb was never a step up from the G5RV. Receive performance is commonly limited by noise, the DB-Pros small footprint and balanced feed must contribute to the absence of unwanted noise.
A company is best judged on its after sales service, to sum up my experience, excellent product support 3 years after the sale, product in daily use 3 years on, superb!
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| OE1ENS |
Rating: |
2014-12-14 | |
| great antenna |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I bought this antenna, because it fits exactly on my balcony. The parts fit perfect and it was easy to assemble the few parts. It is very light and I use it with an eight meter mast and it works really great. You can find pictures on http://www.qrz.com/db/oe1ens
With my old Icom IC-735 with just 100 watts I had already SSB QSO's with 59 from Austria to the USA. I think the performance of the Dual Beam Pro is worth the money. |
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| G7BYG |
Rating: |
2014-09-09 | |
| Fantastic Beam |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Well I waited for a new one but due to demand I purchased a nearly new one off -BAY put it up 30 foot and wow the signals came in. Well constructed with quality materials and easy assembly. I had a problem with 40 meters could not tune I rang Carl and he was more than helpful his advise to use a balanced line connection to my external tuner now gives me 1.1 on all bands thank you Carl I highly recommend the Pro Antenna and the help I received from the owner
Andrew
G7BYG |
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| IZ0IRH |
Rating: |
2014-08-06 | |
| Good with some reserve |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I wrote a first review one and a half year ago, giving 3 as rating. Now after long using this antenna I feel I can give a final 4 rating, but no more. The reasons:
- CONS:
-The price: it is overpriced for what really the antenna is: A simple capacitively end loaded dipole, with a very basic 1:1 current balun.
-The performance : really poor at 40 meters, even with low loss coax, because the need to use a tuner for such high SWR introduces too high losses, and it is really a pain in the ass.
Starts to perform decently from 20 meters up.
80 meters are not even worth to mention, of course.
- The annoiance to be forced to tune-up at each band change.
The PROS:
- It is lightweight (ony 4 kilos), so can be mounted and moved very easily, and do not need large poles or towers
- The aluminium is good quality
- It's small size, so OMs with small spaces can mount it.
It would be interesting to use an open, balanced line, to have low losses, in place of a coaxial cable, but then , why not go back to the damn old G5RV or a couple of cross doublets to get the same performance at much lower cost?
Please give me one more good reason to choose this antenna again.
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| MI0MSB |
Rating:  |
2014-05-02 | |
| cheap dirt |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Having owned this rubish for some time I have managed to get rid of it by asking someone to climb up on my roof and take it away for free, it had been disconected for along time I tried throwing a arope aroud it so I could tow it of the house so I could get some scrap value out of it but to no avail the long wire with 400 watts not only better but a quater of the price.
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Earlier 0-star review posted by MI0MSB on 2013-08-27
First of all when I bought the pro Antenna 400 watts power handling I thought I was buying a good Antenna I looked over the reveiws and all seemed good what I did notice about the antenna there was not a lot between it and my full size G5RV certainly not for the price then a couple of months later they lunched high powered version 1000 watts rated at almost the same price when I called for an upgrade they wanted another £108,00 of me I had just spent £239.00 on the antenna which would have cost me a total of £347 the owner did offer to send me out the transfomer for free as a goodwill token but when I called him on it turn out I did not get the new transformer so if anyone wants to buy this antenna cheap just so I can get rid of it no prob also its no better than a G5RV and £20 worth of parts what a ripoff but dont take my word buy one and see for yourself. |
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| G5STO |
Rating: |
2013-10-29 | |
| Great Antenna, competes with the best |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| I borrowed a friends for a month and it was a joy to operate with good reports as I own an Cushcraft ASL2010 8el log periodic beam and a Cushcraft A4s and A3s too and this little antenna has a good performance compared to the three. OK it's never going to go be a direct comparison to them but with that said you pay £500 more. I found it a nice little performer for the money and it only requires a light duty rotator which helps if your on a tight budget. I had heard it mentioned these are like a rotatable G5RV but thats simply not true. I have very limited space at my QTH and this will get in the garden without too much of an eye sore. It has to be a 4 out of 5 for me as it's cheap and works pretty well and if I did have a grumble then it's a bit on the flimsy side. Thicker metal would add to the weight and possible need a medium duty rotator but I would want an antenna to last and I am only giving it a 4 out of 5 because if it took a direct 80mph gust it might just break but it's unlikely however a possibility. G5RV's are naff on 10m and 15m this is where you pay your money for a beam. |
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