Well, I got my CondoBuster antenna up
 

So, I bought one of those CondoBuster 10 12 15 17 and 20 meter antennas
that the guy sells on ebay for $20. It came last week and I hand the
maintenance guy, who is also my fishing buddy, come over on Saturday to
help me put it up.

I live on the top floor of a two story condo building. We have a peak
type roof that extends out over about half of our balcony. So, what we
did with install this antenna, which is an off center fed dipole, as an
inverted vee from the peak on the roof and then ran the legs down the
end of each of the roof sections. The antenna was mounted with little
C shaped stand off insulators. The antenna is black and the insulators
are black so it is real difficult to see if you are more then 15 or 20
feet away from it.

I connected it to my Kenwood 850 and made a couple contacts on 20 and a
couple on 17. The antenna appeared to work quite well. But I wanted
to find out just how well it worked compared to the antenna I was
using. For the past 4 or 5 years I have been using the older model of
the B&W Cliff Dweller antennas. Not the newer one, but the older one
that has the interchangeable coils. It is just one hell of a good
antenna.

So, anyhow, I went over to a friend's house and borrowed and antenna
switch, brought it home and connected both the CondoBuster and the B&W
to it so I could switch back and forth. Well, the guy who sells these
says you will be amazed, and I was. Generally there was a difference
of between one to three S-units on a given signal on the receive site
and about one to two S-units on the transmit side. The difference is
profound.

I am feeding it with RG-58U. No balun, the antenna tuner in the 850
matches it perfectly. I am just happy as hell with the antenna. It is
the best 20 bucks I have ever spent on ham gear.

73s Art