pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
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 |
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
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 |
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
Steve wrote: snip 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 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 Steve, I am in a suburban neighborhood north of the DFW area (Allen specifically). I did not ground the coax shield. I have been using a 75 ft wire at a height of 8', or the internal whip until now. I attached the mini-whip to a PVC pipe of about 8 ft length. I extended it out from a second floor bedroom window at about a 60deg angle which allows me to anchor it to the window sill and secure it to the roof overhang. This places the mini-whip at a height of about 20ft and a distance of about 4ft or so from the side of the house. I ran the coax down the pipe with cable ties straight to the power feed unit. The power feed is connected to a 12V deep cycle battery and directly to the radio via a 1ft coax. Roelof and other users have stated that it only works well if you get it high and as far away from noise sources as possible. Honestly, I am very impressed. It has a much lower noise floor than using the wire and provides much more gain than the internal whip. The wire could pull in some stations that are, for me, pretty weak but I always struggled to understand through the noise. The internal whip is pretty quiet but just couldn't bring in anything much. Last night I heard dozens of stations I had never heard before, and the ones I had heard before were dramatically clearer. Now I need to state that I am by no means a DXer. I simply do not have the antenna space or the wife's permission for a large loop or anything like that. I guess that makes me a BCB listener. That's ok though. I am very excited about this antenna and plan on spending a lot of hours re-exploring the bands. If you want, I can take some pics of my setup and area to which you can compare your own. It might shed some light. Good luck! -Al |
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
In article . com,
"Steve" wrote: 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! 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. I think you are in an urban environment, which probably has a worse local noise spectrum than at Al's location. You also probably used an AC supply to power the antenna where Al is using a battery. -- Telamon Ventura, California |
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
In article om,
"exal" wrote: Steve wrote: snip 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! 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. I am in a suburban neighborhood north of the DFW area (Allen specifically). I did not ground the coax shield. I have been using a 75 ft wire at a height of 8', or the internal whip until now. I attached the mini-whip to a PVC pipe of about 8 ft length. I extended it out from a second floor bedroom window at about a 60deg angle which allows me to anchor it to the window sill and secure it to the roof overhang. This places the mini-whip at a height of about 20ft and a distance of about 4ft or so from the side of the house. I ran the coax down the pipe with cable ties straight to the power feed unit. The power feed is connected to a 12V deep cycle battery and directly to the radio via a 1ft coax. Roelof and other users have stated that it only works well if you get it high and as far away from noise sources as possible. Honestly, I am very impressed. It has a much lower noise floor than using the wire and provides much more gain than the internal whip. The wire could pull in some stations that are, for me, pretty weak but I always struggled to understand through the noise. The internal whip is pretty quiet but just couldn't bring in anything much. Last night I heard dozens of stations I had never heard before, and the ones I had heard before were dramatically clearer. Now I need to state that I am by no means a DXer. I simply do not have the antenna space or the wife's permission for a large loop or anything like that. I guess that makes me a BCB listener. That's ok though. I am very excited about this antenna and plan on spending a lot of hours re-exploring the bands. If you want, I can take some pics of my setup and area to which you can compare your own. It might shed some light. There is a good chance that if you stood on a ladder holding the radio at the same location your reception would be about the same on the whip although the levels would be lower without the active antenna amplification. Since the active antenna is an electrically small E mode active antenna using a battery to drive it instead of a AC mains supply helped keep the noise floor low so that using it was an actual improvement. -- Telamon Ventura, California |
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
Telamon wrote: In article . com, "Steve" wrote: 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! 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. I think you are in an urban environment, which probably has a worse local noise spectrum than at Al's location. You also probably used an AC supply to power the antenna where Al is using a battery. -- Telamon Ventura, California Not a bad guess, but I actually powered it off an SLA battery. The problem wasn't noise though--or at least it didn't seem to be. I compared it to an LF-Engineering H-800, a Wellbrook loop and later a fairly short (roughly 30 ft) random wire attached to a matching transformer and fed with coax at a height of around 25 feet or so. All of these other antennas outperformed the mini-whip (though it was a close call with the H-800). Ah well. I will keep the mini whip and no doubt have fun trying to figure out how to improve its performance. |
pa0rdt-Mini-Whip
"Al Arduengo" a écrit dans le message de news: ... 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. Hi Al ,where did you order it from ? website ? Thanks, Frank |
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