Al Arduengo wrote:
I ordered one of these things after reading a blurb about it while
studying antennas. After placing the order I began to read reviews and
was honestly somewhat skeptical. I need not have been.

I received it yesterday and finally put it up today. I attached it to an
8' section of PVC pipe and mounted the pipe at a 45 degree angle to the
side of my house from a second floor window. I ran the coax down the pipe
and into the window to my E1.

I really did not expect too much based on the reviews I had read which
seemed luke warm most of the time. This thing utterly amazed me! I
compared to the whip as well as my 75' long wire. It absolutely smoked
the whip and performed significantly better than the wire. A quick gauge
for me is how well I receive 5K, 10K, 15K. I have NEVER been able to
hear more than one at a time. Today with the Mini-Whip, I heard 5,10 AND
15! Granted 15K was a little low but it was readable. Scanning the BC
bands I found that compared to the internal whip (which is fairly good on
the E1), I was able to pull up signals that were buried in a noise floor
at about S4, to +20 over S9 in some cases. The average increase in
strength for any frequency I checked was 2-4 S units and often to +30 over
S9. And the really neat thing is that the signal was very quiet. RTI
with the internal whip was about S6 which is readable but skirted in
noise. With the mini-whip it was +20 and almost full quieting! I
expected this thing to be a noise amplifier. It is indeed NOT that.

Anyway, that is my initial and not-so-scientific impression of the
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip. I feel like I have just discovered SWL after doing it
for 3 years.

Congrats to Roelof for a great work!

Best,
-Al

--
"Don't get too wrapped up in dogma. Who knows? When we get to heaven
there might be a Big Buddha laughing at us while we're all running
around going 'Oh ****!'" - a Catholic bishop

Are you in a rural, urban or suburban location? Have you grounded the
coax shield in any way where it meets the antenna? What kind of antenna
were you using before?

I tried the mini-whip and was disappointed, so I'm curious about why it
works so much better for other people than it does for me.

Steve