Picture courtesy of Mudskipper-John from Wootton BassettThe infamous Antron 99 CB Base station antenna made by Solarcon is probably one of the biggest selling antennas of all time. The sales hype probably has a lot to do with the sales figures of this fiberglass 3 section antenna.
Solarcon boast 9.9dBi gain...that is to say 7.75dBd gain to the unknowing.
Put another way....they are saying that if you put 40 watts into a 1/4 wave antenna with 4 x 1/4 wave ground plane legs at the same height as the Antron 99, then you only need to put 4 watts into the Antron 99 to have the same signal!
OH REALLY!! Try it, or click here and see for yourself!
Still, reasonably good value, and VERY capable of wind survival, this antenna has probably provided hours of DX chasing and fun for the CB operator, as well as a yacht in the Cayman Islands for the inventor!!
4 comments:
It's a while since I was last on air, but when I was we had a chronic deadkeyer in my area. No-one could get over her because she was using an Antron 99, no-one else's antennas were anywhere near as powerful. This is what led to me purchasing a 400w homebase linear with a huge glass valve inside and 400w output on fm. Naughty I know, but a necessity at the time. I never saw the point of deadkeying (and still don't), what the hell is wrong with some people??
No voodoo in there Ive cut it open and looked, over hyped specs and very poor internal build quality (very losy conections)cut off the bottom coupler and cut the cheap coax stub, break out the base section wire and coil/capacitor assembly from the first joint base and rewind coils with decent enameled copper wire, directly join the coax to coils then and add a 23 1/2 inch stub matching counterpoise from coax screen, forget the rings and GPK! flat swr 26mhz to 28mhz and improved S points on TX and a much sweeter RX. This would have been a great antenna had they not sold the design to Solar-CON.
Phil
Had one of these, could't get the swr below 1.8 for love or money ended up selling it and gettimg a Sirtel which worked like a charm.
Lot's of hype with these antenna's but in truth its just a halfwave antenna and if mounted at the same height as a 5/8wave silver rod costing 1/3rd of the price it loses hands down.
Radio waves don't care what make, model or colour your antenna is, or how much you paid for it.
Dead keyers are annoying, but it's not illegal, but using a linear amp on 11 meters could get you arrested
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