After giving it a lot of thought & reading comments & reviews,I decided to give one a try so i took the plunge & purchased a Duel beam pro last month.I finally erected it on my mast & Yaesu g-650 rotator at approximately 42ft last week,I used a new length of RG213 24mtrs long however when i tried to tune the antenna it was struggling to tune on the 40 - 15 & 17mtr bands using the tuner in my IC-775 DSP.I then lowered the mast & removed 12ft of coax & returned to the shack,great it tuned every band from 40 to 10 mtrs with ease also it tuned on 80 mtrs.I was amazed at how well the duel beam pro was receiving on 40-20-17 & 15 mtrs,below are the first few stations I worked including reports.

TM9WAP...... 7.140.00.......RX 5-9+....TX 5-9+
IT0RXF...... 18.150.00.......RX 5-9+....TX 5-9
M0PAW...... 7.130.00.......RX 5-9+....TX 5-9+
9K2F............21.266.00..... RX 5-9+....TX 5-9
LZ1 134GO....18.125.00......RX 5-9......TX 5-9
HS0ZIQ.........14255.00.......RX 5-7......TX 5-7

All the above worked with 150 WTTS From my IC-775DSP Antenna @ 42ft rotated.Band conditions reported as fair to good at the time.
No one was more surprised than me at the results "I don't know how this antenna does it but it certainly works for me".Is it worth the money? in my case yes & I would most likely buy another if the need arised.

73s
Paul.

,




I think I had one of those a few years ago, but havn't seen one lately - I have the cash, but just short of space !!

Hi paul , to be honest not great results from a beam and 150 watts ...

Hi paul , to be honest not great results from a beam and 150 watts ...[/quote


Billie it is a small non resonant rotary dipole & not really a beam,however it has useful nulls & directivity.The band conditions have not been great,and considering the contact with HS0ZIQ @ over 5965.8 miles & the fact that the band was dropping out at the time,I think it was a good result,many stations tried to break into his pileup & had no reply,I managed it & was very pleased.

O.k its not a 3 ele beam or a quad,both of which i have used in the past but can no longer use due to local authority,
the pro beam outperforms my inverted L @ 32ft with about 10 buried radials ,it looks very unobtrusive easy to install & maintain and well constructed unlike the mini beams i have used in the past,in my opinion it does the job & works for me so at the the moment i am very happy with it,looking at the antenna when you first set it up gives you the impression that it will never work as its just another dummy load antenna like some of the other vertical antennas with 9:1 unun attached what are sold on e-bay,but no it outperforms them by leaps & bounds & believe me I've tried them all.In a nutshell it works & has a lot going for it.I can understand the sceptics saying this that & the other it's only a aluminium dipole short one at that with a transformer,Don't ask me why it works so well but it does,it gives me all bands from 40 to 10 mtrs it is also very well built with good quality parts "unlike some of the crap verticals being sold these days.

By the way i have no interests with proantennas other than speaking to Carl by landline prior to my purchase.

73
Paul.

I've always thought it was a pretty good way to cover 20m thru 10m in a compact design.

My only issues with it are:
* Misleading advertising - calling it a "beam"
* It would probably perform even better if you ditched the balun and coax, and fed it with ladderline from an external tuner.

73,
Steve G3TXQ

Steve I am pleased you brought up the subject of ditching the balun and coax,sadly i have no external atu at the moment but am on the lookout for one,I would really like to try this method of feeding the pro beam or rotary dipole as i call it,is there any particular length you would use or just random ?.

73
Paul.

Paul,

The ladderline length isn't critical - just think of it as a multiband doublet fed with ladderline.

How much you might gain depends on how long your coax is, and what type. If we assume the balun is a 4:1 fed with 100ft of RG213 the coax losses work out at:

20m: 3.3dB
17m: 1.6dB
15m: 1.7dB
12m: 2.5dB
10m: 3.3dB

For that example ladderline ought to give a worthwhile improvement on 20m, 12m and 10m. But if you only had, say, 30ft of RG213 the change to ladderline probably wouldn't be worthwhile.

73,
Steve G3TXQ

Interesting figures for the coax Steve,i am using abt 20 mtrs of rg213 at the moment,The ladderline sounds like a a good experiment to try during the summer.I will give it a go and see how it pans out.

73
Paul.

Paul,

I'm surprised you manage to match it on 40m - I suspect there must be quite a lot of coax braid current on that band and it is acting more like a vertical. If you rotate it while listening to a steady signal, do you notice much in the way of end nulls on 40m?

73,
Steve G3TXQ

Steve,
I have just this minute checked this on 40mtrs,There is a difference of some 3 to 4 spoints on my meter.I have also tested the end nulls during the week on the WAB net with more or less same result.I am at present on 7.160.00 GB3RS is 5/9 +10 5/7 to 8 on the nulls.Most stations are giving about the same result.I am receiving a couple of continental stations that called in but some of the G stations could not hear them,they where 5/5 with me.

73
Paul

I would be really interested in opinion a to how this is likely compare to the performance of my cobweb.

73
Steve M6TOK

Paul,

That's interesting - particularly as signals from a station like GB3RS should be very high angle where even a beam would be pretty much omnidirectional. I can see a summer project on the way to evaluate one myself

Steve G3TXQ

The reviews in Practical Wireless and Radcom are very positive as well. I am wondering if the 40m version (I-Pro Max) is worth a go. It will convert back to an I-Pro Home and also can be adapted to the horizontal version. Given very restricted space, I am struggling with an alternative for 40m. I am still wondering how its performance might stand up to my Cobweb (G3TXQ single wire version), which is pretty good.

Steve (M6TOK)

On 20m thru 10m I wouldn't expect any significant difference between the cobweb and the end-loaded dipole; the 1dB gain disadvantage of the cobweb is probably offset by the dipole coax and balun losses.

Of course the dipole gives you some directivity if QRM is a problem; but that also means it needs a rotator.

Steve G3TXQ

Steve,

I have owned 2 original cobwebs in the past,one when first licenced 16yrs ago & one about 2yrs ago and they both worked very well indeed,the only thing i found when using the cobweb was the 12 & 10 mtr performance was not so good on rx & tx as the other bands.
I would give the pro-beam my vote over the cobweb,reason being.........

1... the ability to rotate

2... the 40mtr band coverage is good I did not really believe the advertising hype "but it really did surprise me".

3... Assembling and Erecting the antenna was simple & was done in less than half hour,build quality & materials 1st rate.

4... The visual impact is streamline and very easy on the eye.

Steve, I am still considering your idea regarding ditching the balun and coax,and feeding with ladder line direct to my tuner.
Since my last post i purchased a manual tuner,i don't now why but i found the pro-beam was struggling to tune on 40mtrs,it tuned easily with the internal tuner in my 775dsp.
I have now replaced the 12 ft of coax i previously removed and it now tunes on all bands very easily.I also noticed that the end nulls where not quite so good with the external tuner and extra 12 ft of coax,i find this all very strange,however the antenna is still working very well and i have been working some good contacts even with poor band conditions.

73s
Paul.