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Reviews For: DX Engineering Active Horizontal Receive Ant ARAH2-P

Category: Antennas: VLF/LF/HF Receive only

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Review Summary For : DX Engineering Active Horizontal Receive Ant ARAH2-P
Reviews: 1MSRP: 330
Description:
Rotatable dipole antenna with preamplifier located at antenna.
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.dxengineering.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
W6MK Rating: 2011-01-17
Further explanation of problem Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
After posting my (poor) review of this antenna here yesterday, I emailed a notice of the review to DX Engineering. Today I received a thoughtful email from Rod Ehrhart stating the following:

1. They would have preferred that I had contacted them again directly about the antenna problem.
2. My review should have noted that the antenna has been mounted on my roof only a few feet from a metal gutter system.
3. The antenna evidently is picking up local broadband noise which is re-radiated by the metal gutter system. Rod suggests and I agree that there could be other such explanations having to do with the antenna location and my house site. I have not been able to nail down the precise cause of my problem to my satisfaction, but I have to admit that I have lots of other radio-related mysteries I can spend joyful time trying to solve.
4. The active unit in the antenna is not a preamplifier, but is an active matching system which improves the performance of the very short dipole to that of a larger antenna.
5. DX Engineering has offered to refund my costs if I will return the antenna to them.

In summary, DX Engineering fully deserves a "5" for its customer service. Unfortunately this particular antenna is not suitable for use at my site (and possibly other sites with similar characteristics). There are very good reviews here of the performance of DX Engineering active vertical antennas and antenna arrays, but previous to my review, none on the active horizontal antenna. The available literature on the horizontal antenna did not alert me to the possibility that the antenna might not work for me.