| Author |
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Mr. B
| | Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2002 - 6:32 pm: | 
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Could you guys give me any info on this antenna? Does anybody have one? Do they like it? Is it worth the money? Is TVI/RFI a problem with this antenna?
THANKS - MR. B IN NEW ORLEANS |
JJ
| | Posted on Sunday, March 03, 2002 - 11:30 am: |
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I think the antenna has a true 7 DB gain. Not a fake 9.9 that the antron has. Looks like a killer antenna - has 18 radials I think. |
RENEGADE
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 06, 2002 - 9:35 pm: |
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If you look closely the antron has a 9.9 DBI gain ..Not DB, the spectrum 1600 has a 7.5 DB gain. This antenna really smokes. A pain to put together and put up with all the radials but really worth it. This antenna has GREAT ears. 7.5 DB transmit and recieve. Put your money in a good antenna, your money is better spent here than anywhere else in your radio station. |
RENEGADE
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 06, 2002 - 10:00 pm: |
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Just for comparison the Antron's 9.9 DBI gain= 3.3 DB gain. Hope this helps clear up any confusion. |
Mr. B
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 12:27 am: |
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RENEGADE - How is this antenna with TVI/RFI?
Thanks for all the info - I am going to get one. Where did you get yours? Do you know how much the weight is? Can I put it on a 20' pole mounted on my chimney without guy wires?
THANKS
MR. B |
bruce
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 2:04 pm: |
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To get gain you have to conpress the enegry a DBI GAIN of about 3 db DBI which is the SAME as the REAL gain of a 1/2 wave endfed ( DBD ) over a isotropic (DBI) antenna.. which exsists only on paper now a 5/8 wave has about 2 db ( DBD )over a ground plane or a endfed 1/2 wave vert or about 5 ( DBI ).
by the way to get 9 DBD of gain you would have to stack (8) 1/2 waves on top of each other and feed them in phase. Sorry A99 you dont. |
RCI2990
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 5:02 pm: |
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Were can you get them? I know i saw them on Bills 2 way but he will not stock them anymore for some odd reason. I guess he didnt like them so he though no one else should either... |
bruce
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 8:44 pm: |
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renegade if it is a 5/8 wave about 22 foot tall it has 2-3 db real gain not 7.5 DBD omidirectional to get that you would have to stack (6) 5/8 waves on top of each other over 100 foot tall... nice idea |
Bigbob
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 9:14 pm: |
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According to understanding and repairing cb radios antenna section,dbd gain over dipole ,dbi gain over isotropic.Dbi is approx.2.1 higher than dbd thus an Antron99 is 9.9 minus 2.1 or 7.8 ,better than the 1600s 7.5 . So study,study,study before you insert foot in mouth.The arrl antenna book supports my finding. |
Taz
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 9:31 pm: |
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haha, you gust are missing one thing!
THIS RADIO HOBBIE THAT WE ALL PARTICIPATE IN IS A SCIENCE!
THE MATH ON PAPER DOSENT ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH!
ITS FEILD PERFORMANCE THAT SAYS HOW IT WORKS! |
RENEGADE
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 10:01 pm: |
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Bruce, I can't dispute or agree with you on your assessment of the spectrums TRUE db gain as I am just an ordinary CB'er not a mathematician nor do I profess to be. Just going by the Mfg. specs and my personal experience with the antenna. They all tend to exaggerate their numbers.All I know is this is the best antenna I've used other than a beam. I've had quite a few over the years and in my opinion this one beats the others hands down! It really does have great ears, in fact sometimes too good, I've had to cut the RF gain back on my radio to talk local! No foolin! MrB your going to need guy wires with 20 foot mast. This antenna has a pretty good wind load.Look up spectrum 1600 on google,it should point you in the right direction. Hope this has been of help.
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RENEGADE
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 10:10 pm: |
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Bigbob, not trying to be a know it all or trying to put my foot in my mouth. Just trying to help. Maybe I have egg on my face maybe I dont. LOL! |
bruce
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 10:34 pm: |
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big bob to get 9.9 dbi gain you must compress the vertical comp of the ant to a beamwidth of about 9 deg to do this you must stack 8 1/2 wave antenns above each other in phase now in almost 40 years of radio work ive never seen anything to disprove this the BEST you can do with a single 1/2 wave is a beam width of around 69 deg @-3db or 2 dbi.... recheck your arrl book ... but you are correct on 2.1 dbi over dbd by the way a ringo ranger is (2) 5/8 waves stacked and has a gain of only 6 dbi ( 3.9dbd) on cb this ant would be almost 50 foot |
bruce
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2002 - 11:10 pm: |
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Just to settle this if you would go look at vert beam width of gain vertical antenna for vhf/uhf i think you will find that all of thoes that have 9 db of gain are in the 9 deg wide range and if you go figure that on 2 meters for every foot tall the same antenna will be 6 foot tall on cb the numbers will be as i said.... summing it up a 1/2 wave to 5/8 wave ant is good for 2-3dbi that it fokes!
radio-doctor@juno.com |
bruce
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 7:50 am: |
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renegade
JOGUNN is the worst at outright lies but the others are not far behind i have built antennas for many years Here is a simple way to tell if a antenna has more gain than the others
If you antenna is so good that it produces more gain than any other within 1 year all others will use the same configuration and the big boys like decible products will be producing copys of it for the other radio services at very large prices ( a cb 1/2 wave from DP is well over 100 bucks)
There will be a whole new section on this in the ARRL handbook and antenna books and how to build your own in QST, 73 and cq.
Remember Bruce's law of gain the ONLY way to get gain is to change the E/H plane of the antenna by compression. To do this you must ADD elements and every time you double the number of elements you add 3 db. So if a 1/2 wave has 3 dbi gain (2) stacked has 6dbi and 4 stacked 1/2 wave has 9 dbi
and (8) have 12 dbi or 9.9 dbd
bruce |
RCI2990
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 7:18 pm: |
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Bruce,
If you are a ham WHY are you talking on a CB related forum?? |
Forummaster
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 7:45 pm: |
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I'm not sure exactly what RCI2990 meant in his last post but I want to make something clear.
Ham operators are welcome here.
I have found that a lot of ham operators are also cber's. I also believe that many of you who are only cber's now will eventually become ham operators.
Hopefully this will be a good place for hams and cbers to bury their differences and share their love for communications.
So with that in mind please carry on with the conversation. |
bruce
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 8:55 pm: |
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Because i try my best to prove that we can get along the formmaster is correct i feel welcome here i enjoy " talking " with thoes i have driffrences with and for the most part want to hear what you all have to say. As for cb i have been involved in both cb and ham radio for damn near 40 years long before most people on this forum it was my acces to radio as a child through my dad's ownership of a cb set that propelled me ay age 14 into ham radio and 16 into getting the tech ticket that i held till just a few years ago. Never have you heard me ( except when being sarcastic toward stupity ) down anyone on this forum in fact i always welcome e-mail from anyone who doent not like my viewpoint or feels they dont want to air it on this forum. Electonics is what i do and ive been doing it starting with tech school in 1963 and im still doing what i like more than i can say for a lot of people. I also have been involved in building antennas since my childhood and have a good working knolage of how they work and it irks me to see good people put out good money on a bad or misleeding product. ...Joegunn being a pet peeve By the way you will never see me post anything blanketly condemming cbers or cb .... with stupidy excluded.
intresting that someone should question why i would try to add to all of this something of value by question my motives.
bruce |
Bigbob
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 9:21 pm: |
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Bruce;you're speaking of uni-directional or omni-directional gain? Or angle of radiation,or do these all go hand in hand? |
bruce
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2002 - 10:17 pm: |
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big bob they all go hand and hand just think of your ant as a light bulb now if you use a lense to allow the beem to flating out it will get brighter where it still hits in DBI it is equal all around but that dosnt exsist so the real world is dbd
angle of radiation is at what plane it is the strongest
uni means it is less than a 360deg circle horz
omi means it is 360 degs horz
e-mail me radio-doctor@juno.com
bruce |
RCI2990
| | Posted on Sunday, March 10, 2002 - 6:10 pm: |
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hey Bruce.
No offense i hope was taken for what i posted on here earlier I HOPE!
BTW how would that spectrum 1600 stack up against say, the HY gain P 500 or a Avanti sigma 5/8 wave(AV 170)? |
Cavatist
| | Posted on Monday, April 29, 2002 - 4:56 pm: |
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I recently bought a spectrum 1600, it's absolutely the best antenna i've ever owned. I don't know much about the technical stuff but this antenna is well worth the money. |
bruce
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2002 - 9:58 am: |
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Ok i dont know where they get the data from ( i done see any field test results ) but it looks like its well made. As for the lighting protection your super mag antennas of 40 years ago used the same system so it is not new by any means Otherwise i say they are making a very nice 2.5 db gain well thought out basestation antenna.
Spectrum 1600
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Galileo
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2002 - 8:50 pm: |
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How does this antenna compare to the Maco 5/8th's?????? Which would perform the best..???? Opinions.......Thanks..... |
bruce
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 5:15 am: |
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a 5/8 wave is a 5/8 wave if it is made correctly all have the same gain ( about 3DBD ) or about 1 db over a 1/2 wave |
Galileo
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 8:17 pm: |
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So the type of feed makes no difference, the materials??? Just curious....What about the type of and amount (size) of the radials??? |
bruce
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 9:22 pm: |
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If its tuned corectly very little the only changes would be if you used cheep materials that roted out and cause high resistance internal conection As for radial size that is a interesting point but i know from my own experimenting decoupling with a beaded balum did as much as radials to prevent loosing signal back down the coax.... you might experiment with adding cut wires about 99 inches long at the feed point and a field strengh meter and see if you can show any change end fed 5/8 wave antennas usaly need some radials while 1/2 wave ones seem to need less... as long as your coax is decoupled.
if you show any changes i'd like to know. |
Jaymojave
| | Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 8:04 pm: |
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Hello Mr B:
The Spectrun 1600 Antenna, does work reasonable.
But its made from low quality Aluminum Tubing, and will break at the base or lower vertical element.
The forgin made Aluminum Tubing is only fit for broom handles.
The guys out here in the Mojave Desert have used the Spectrum 1600, and all have broke. Be advised
The gain ratings are not correct.
Jay in the Mojave |
bruce
| | Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 10:03 pm: |
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jay my answer clearly stated that if bad construction was a problem then it is not a good choice Galileo you have your answer |
RCI2990
| | Posted on Sunday, May 05, 2002 - 4:21 pm: |
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Jay is 100% correct. NONE of the newer foreign aluminum antennas are worth a hoot aluminum quality wise. They just are too cheaply made! Thats why i stick with anything made pre 1980s by either Avanti, Hy Gain or A/S. Back then stuff was made better and the aluminum was better quality. |
DonKB9
| | Posted on Sunday, May 05, 2002 - 9:49 pm: |
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Hello Mr. B:
I can remember when very few of us used Omni directional antennas (groundplanes) except for maybe bad weather conditions where one would not want to move a Beam. So I guess I am wondering why not go with something that will give you more gain than a omni and also give you direction and nulls where you might want it....go with a BEAM. Even a small beam with moderate gain will beat most verticals. If you have $500 bucks in had don't blow all your money on an expensive rig when the ANTENNA does all the work...but the most amount of money possible in your antenna and if you have to save for a better radio then save and buy later. Just my view on this.
73 Don |
bruce
| | Posted on Sunday, May 05, 2002 - 11:30 pm: |
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my mosley DI-6 6 meter antenna was bought in 1973 and is still up and still working fine TODAY your right qualty makes a diffrence |
KGG1157
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 1:12 am: |
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About the Spectrum 1600...
ONE WORD...Flexible.
Not in a good way either. The performance exceeds that of my nbs-2010 (new Army big stick model) but the Big stick ( or any other for that matter) is tougher....especially in high wind prone areas.
I bought mine back in Jan 1999. Assembly is a @#$% in the rear....especially when it comes to attaching the 25 ground plane radials. The Screws that they give you to attach every thing together (the antenna itself is in 5 sections) are very small and useless.[Use 1/2" sheet metal screws for replacements] I have tried the ol way of mounting a wooden broom stick in the first and second section of the antenna to stiffen it up and it helped a little with no loss in readings. As far as RFI with tvs etc,,,,minimal rfi noticed at stock power. Another complaint is the braided copper conductor that attaches to the the Massive loading coil arrived unsoldered....if ya can get past all the Italian Hype about imported Lambda 5/8 designs, it is a good performer, but if ya live in windy areas..look elsewhere.
STATS: 36 foot Rat Shack push-up pole
RG8 50' coax
Antenna was mounted 30' up and had a very flat reading of 1.2 SWR throughout the band
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RCI2990
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 11:18 pm: |
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Hmm. Ill stick with my old 1970s avanti stuff then if it is bad in the wind. I live in the midwest and we have some rough and tumble weather in the winter and spring here lots of wind and hail and driving rain. |
KGG1157
| | Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2002 - 1:34 pm: |
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Yup...this antenna (Spec. 1600) has gone thru hell and looks like it too. Here in the sticks of Atascosa TX (15 miles south of San Antonio)we can get our share of the rough stuff. Thats why I moved to the Shakespeare...tougher n hell...Correction.....
The Spectrum 1600 antenna is a 7 piece....not 5 and has 20 groundplane radials...not 25 as I thought it did earlier. |
bullet/151 southern Indiana
| | Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2002 - 2:16 pm: |
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bruce,
we have talked about 1/2 and 5/8 wave vert omni's but what of other lengths as far as gain?
i forget the antennas by name but it was suppost to be 3/4 wave and another at 7/8 wave.what kind of gain would those produce if those are the true
wavelengths. or even a full wave for that matter.
ive have construction data on a 2meter 5/4 wavelength vert by Mike Martell n1hfx that claims
at least 6 db gain if mounted high enuff (dbd/dbi)didnt say witch. so before i go through the trouble of scaling/building one for 11 meter is this probable for this wavelength to have 6 db gain. |
bruce
| | Posted on Thursday, May 09, 2002 - 10:23 pm: |
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Here it is and it is some sort of coliner aray and yes it would work they are out there the closes to that is a ringo ranger as for gain interesting i would like to see his field test he admitts he is gussing...neet idea though.
http://www.rason.org/Projects/ant54/ant54.htm
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bullet
| | Posted on Friday, May 10, 2002 - 9:43 am: |
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thats it exactly! |
Funtimebob
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 3:30 am: |
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There are 3 different 3/4 wave antennas that I am aware of. The sigma4, and 2 clones a Gal-27 and Vector 4000 |
RCI2990
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 7:56 pm: |
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I always though the sigma 4 was a 7/8 wave.. |
bruce
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 7:28 am: |
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interesting .... how do you make a 7/8 wave work ? |
bullet
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 11:03 am: |
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ive seen that posted as well(7/8 wave) but ive never ran a sigma 4 and now nothing about it.
lets go back to gain comparisons between the
5/8th ,3/4, 1 wave verticals what kind of differance in gain will we see in these 3 verticals. |
bruce
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 9:10 pm: |
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field testing has always shown a 5/8 wave radator over a good groundplane is good for 3 DBI a 1/2 wave for 2.1 DBI but anything longer just produces multy lobes useless for anything |
Bigbob
| | Posted on Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 8:26 am: |
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You're right bruce,you guys listen to this man HE REALLY DOES KNOW ANTENNAS.I went back and studied the arrl antenna book again,and they totally agree with bruces findings.All of us have some experience with antennas,but unless we have an engineering degree or many years experience in the field with others of greater knowedge then our view will be flawed.Thank heaven for hobbiests like Bruce and I mean all of you and you know who you are. |
