Best CB Radio DX Antenna?

[KM3F]

Would you believe a two element Delta Loop at 30 to 40 feet will be very good for DX.
It responds to both polorizations incoming and outgoing for the best overall performance.
You have some directivity and some gain to boot in a small light weight antenna..
It can be installed in one of two positions.
One favors vertical and one does both.
Look up the assembly manuel to find the info.
Two can be stacked in the horizontal plane but takes up a lot of room.
A single is nice to work with.
Good luck.

 

[Yankee]

I'm really happy with my simple dipole and balun. I can talk to Jamaica, Florida, Mexico, over to California with it and a 980SSB barefoot mobile at the house. I have heard Australia on it. I agree with it being a real rush to talk to someone thousands of miles away with a $20 piece of copper wire.

Height does not matter, as long as it has at least 3 or 4 foot of clearance from ground or wall. It bounces off the D layer and has nothing to do with height. I'm even right under a power line and transformer. Makes little apparent difference when the skip is running.

 

[2RT307]

I like to have all my bases covered, as propagation does weird things to signals. I've talked to guys in other states that my local friends could not hear at all via my horizontal 4 element beam. I have also talked to Australia on my A99, and the operator was running a horizontally polarized 4 element Yagi. I could not hear him on my beam! And I've talked to Hawaii on a horizontally mounted dipole.

Having the options to switch and match conditions is nice! If you're on a budget, at the very least get an A99 and a horizontally mounted dipole. If you're not on a budget, a dual polarity beam, and a nice ground plane of your choice. Get a quality antenna switchbox, and have fun.

73,
RT307

 

[eacky]

I think quads or yagis are the king of the heap, if you can alter the high to suit the dx station you want to talk to makes a difference.

 

[sp5it]

Best DX antenna? Directional, horizontal for sure.
8 over 8 is doing pretty good job.

Mike

 

[Troublemaker714]

This is an easy answer

If you owned an I10K this question would be a no brainer. I did like the spectrum 2000 or as the copy Sirios 16. Hands down the BEST 11 meter groundplane goes to the I10K

 

[davegrantsr]

If you owned an I10K this question would be a no brainer. I did like the spectrum 2000 or as the copy Sirios 16. Hands down the BEST 11 meter groundplane goes to the I10K

ARGUABLY the BEST BUILT 11 meter groundplane COULD go to the I10K.
is it HANDS DOWN NOTICEABLY a better performer then ANY OTHER reasonably well designed 5/8 wave antenna. according to the laws of physics, no

 

[jazzsinger]

P.S. you'll have more consistent DX contacts running a good base antenna and power. The victories are sweeter not running power

Being power mad myself for years,especially to get over local traffic my heart says agree with you, but the fact is,its far more satisfying to do the same journey on a barefoot radio and a magmount,

I got briefly into oz one day in very poor conditions running a president jackson and sirio hp4000 as we couldn't be arsed wiring up the linear, we thought conditions were too shitty to bother, unfortuneately due to an italian trying to barge in on heavy power and really bad conditions I lost the guy, but the guy I spoke to next in Belgium, apologised for the italians behaviour (did so again in QSL) and was amazed I'd hit oz on what I was running as he'd been listening and waiting for me to finish to give it a crack himself,after he called the guy in oz after asking me if it was ok to try as I'd lost him we had a good qso as european skip was a little stronger.

It doen't get much better than that unless you use even less power and a more shitty antenna,most of my most memorable contacts are to people running shit gear and defying the odds,back in the solar max in the early 80's I spoke to a guy in Sweden with 3ft firestick on a gp kit in his living room.To me that's more satisfying than a 1KW each way QSO via locked beams to anywhere on the planet.

 

[jazzsinger]

There is no best antenna for 11m,its that simple,

conditions both local (soil conductivity,surrounding objects etc etc,) and propagation wise polarity,(angle of take off/incoming footprint,and so on) dictate what's best at any given time,moving an antenna inches or feet can make huge differences in certain directions at the cost of others.

For me best allround solution would be a 3 element beam, with good 5/8 above it,brand irrelevent as they all pretty much perform the same unless really pish poorly designed or using crap materials on my chimney.Vertical to listen on and beam to home in.

Add to that a higher take off angle verticle or even a lowish mounted dipole at the end of the garden which can work well on short range SP,E and you got just about everything covered.I also find this can often bring in stations beyond normal local and even the shortest SP,E, no doubt some form of ducting be it troposphere or lower.

I've seen a similar type of ducting when there was no skywave propagation at all but at the seafront signals were coming in from other coastal stations well out of range of normal line of sight but usually a very steady signal strength on one day for hours on end which just suddenly disappears,I wasn't only one witnessing it either as a boat en route from Scotland heading to N.Ireland was getting it too,the station we were both getting was on Blackpool promenade,well into the North of England and far from the seafront of the town of Saltcoats on the clyde estuary but we couldn't get through as I didn't have amp with me and he was being bombarded by Rep of Ireland stations directly across the irish sea from him,but I had him S2 for over 4 hours.I call it sea ducting, not sure if anyone else has come across this phenomenom

Add 100w or less, anything more is heavy overkill except in conditions so poor your probably better spending your time off the radio and doing something more productive.Some people have the perception if they use enough power they can create propagation paths,wtf?

Having faith in your gear,shows in confidence in your voice and pays more rewards than all the money in the world invested in an unconfident operators station.

 

[Lil'Yeshua]

Last night I talked to a guy in Southern Louisianna on my mobile(CRE-8900,Sirio PL5000&magmount). There was also some guy from S.C. That came in skip that talked to the same guy after me. This guy had a wire up in a tree at an angle. When conditions are in your favor then...

 

[Yankee]

I had the fact that it's all in the conditions, driven home to me yesterday. You can talk to Hawaii on a coathanger if the conditions are right and you could not talk to anyone on a big beam up a tall tower if it is over the horizon from you, if the conditions in the ionosphere are not right. It's as simple as that.

For the last 10 days or so, my radio has given me nothing but static except for locals, using my dipole. Yesterday, I could hear Australia and New Zealand, and I could talk to people from the Chesapeake bay around to Texas. And it was raining. Today I hear Mexico, but can't get out at all. :bored:

 

[Lil'Yeshua]

I was wondering if a coat hanger might work. :O

 

[Yankee]

You can make it work with an antenna tuner, but it won't work good. An antenna tuner will balance it so you at least do not burn out the radio, but how well it works is anyones guess. People that go out into the wilds to see how well they get out with just a radio and a wire, take a tuner with them.

 

[Lil'Yeshua]

The-four. It's like a turkey shoot on 27.285 am.

 

[Yankee]

A perfect example of conditions ruling the roost. I got nothing on 28 am here. But now I hear a few on 38 lsb, but can not get out to them.

I like to follow this page, it's pretty accurate, once you figure out the top three graphs.