The Antron is a low Q antenna. That's why the SWR is low across such a wide range of frequencies. This means that a lot of the gain it should have as a half wave vertical is lost. You end up with similar performance to a quarter wave ground plane. Coax loss only becomes an issue on long runs and you can compensate on transmit by running more power into the coax from the radio. However one S point is about 4db. If the loss in your coax is 2db it's probably not noticeable. I see similar performance issues with VHF/UHF verticals. Very wide bandwidth because they are trying to cover the US and European allocations but poor performance. I swapped a 2m 5/8 ground plane for a dual band 1m long antenna and lost a lot of coverage on 2m. Signals were down more than an S point.
I use the Antron 99, a new one, I took a 25 year break from radio and When I got back into radio I got the Antron 99 due to I loved the one I had before I left the hobby, The Old ones will out preform the new ones of today, I'm not happy with the New Antron 99 and I am looking for a new groundplane myself, I'll probably go with a Sirio since I have the Sirio 4 element Yagi and it preforms very well. The Antron 99 I have is really is noisy and makes shooting DX hard to do, so I been mostly on the Flat side on the Yagi. Good Luck ~2DX189
Use a antenna analyzer to set the a99 tuning rings before you put the antenna up. I used a basic mfj-207 analyzer to tune my solarcon optimizer antenna and everything turned out perfectly. Btw, love that 2980wx. I have the exact same radio, wouldn't trade it for the world.
The Antron is a low Q antenna. That's why the SWR is low across such a wide range of frequencies. This means that a lot of the gain it should have as a half wave vertical is lost. You end up with similar performance to a quarter wave ground plane. Coax loss only becomes an issue on long runs and you can compensate on transmit by running more power into the coax from the radio. However one S point is about 4db. If the loss in your coax is 2db it's probably not noticeable. I see similar performance issues with VHF/UHF verticals. Very wide bandwidth because they are trying to cover the US and European allocations but poor performance. I swapped a 2m 5/8 ground plane for a dual band 1m long antenna and lost a lot of coverage on 2m. Signals were down more than an S point.
I use the Antron 99, a new one, I took a 25 year break from radio and When I got back into radio I got the Antron 99 due to I loved the one I had before I left the hobby, The Old ones will out preform the new ones of today, I'm not happy with the New Antron 99 and I am looking for a new groundplane myself, I'll probably go with a Sirio since I have the Sirio 4 element Yagi and it preforms very well. The Antron 99 I have is really is noisy and makes shooting DX hard to do, so I been mostly on the Flat side on the Yagi. Good Luck ~2DX189
I used an Antron for several years and switched to a Colossal 10k. Three times the price ten times the performance.
Use a antenna analyzer to set the a99 tuning rings before you put the antenna up. I used a basic mfj-207 analyzer to tune my solarcon optimizer antenna and everything turned out perfectly. Btw, love that 2980wx. I have the exact same radio, wouldn't trade it for the world.
@@johnnymonoxide8134 I always use a analyzer on my antennas.
I use a Antron 99 and had no problems with it
check with a nano vna the impedance etc 73
Hi get a sirio gain master 5/8 di pole covers 12 11 and 10m with a 1.0 ish swr works great a quality antenna
What a boring video this guy hasnt got a clue.