President Himalaya base antenna

[AudioShockwav]

Ok
Anyone running one of these?
The claimed band width is very wide.
And we're have I seen that 8dbi gain figure before?

Anyone?

73
Jeff

 

[sp5it]

Snake oil.

 

[bob85]

I know a handfull of locals that have used them,

one went faulty (deaf) not long after it was put up,

Its a mixed bag of opinions from owners,
some claim they work great with lower noise than a99, others claim they are deaf on rx & that's why the noise is lower,

I went for a look at my buddies to see what the fuss was about,
to me its just another 1/2wave end-fed,

Nobody i know has split one open to see what skullduckery makes it wider banded than the a99.

 

[Rick330man]

Made in Barcelona, Spain. The language instructions could use some help. Other than that, seems like a fairly common half wave design.

Gotta love that 8 dbi gain!

 

[Robb]

Really?!?
With 8db's of gain, only 17 1/4 ft tall, is usable between 22-30mhz, and weighs only 4 1/2 lbs?
Some pretty serious hacking in that thing . . .
Finally - a free lunch!

 

[Handy Andy]

Finally - a free lunch!

With that type of terminology being used...
The word Himalayan = Singular
Himalayans = Plural (Range of Mountains)
...Just about anything is game...
The only thing I find Free here...
Is the advertising...
​

 

[Marconi]

Reminds me of an old 100' feet of Mini 8 I once had connected to my Starduster about 50' high. I later discovered that the coax shield had been contaminated with water. This coax was given to me by a radio buddy that said it had been attached to his A99 after 6 years. I need a coax at least a 100' feet long to raise my SD'r and I didn't think for a minute it was Lossssssssssssyyyyyyyyyy

Below is likely the Web reference that the antenna maker in Spain likely used for his gain specs ------------- published by W8JI on his Website.

I also took noticed the various ways the feed line was suggested to be attached for this new WizzBang antenna, and I've never seen such an idea like that before. Again, maybe these Feed Line connection schemes have something to do with it being ----------- Lossssssssssyyyyyyyyyy.

That old SD'r was as "quiet as a mouse," and showed a bandwidth from 12 meters to 30 MHz. Believe it or not I had no trouble talking or hearing folks that my radio buddies all around me talked with. Some operators local/DX did comment they heard me fine, but I did not show them a signal.

 

[bob85]

None of the locals I know of installed the Himalaya wb with a choke Eddie,

That could be the reason we get different reports from different people with different length masts & feed-lines, some like them & others say they are deaf,

a couple of Himalaya wb got passed around when they first came out,
you have to wonder why the latest greatest thing is only up for a few weeks then sold,

The instructions advise using rg213 as short as possible, so the wide bandwidth can't be lossy coax.

Not enough of them around to have made it onto my scrap antenna pile for me to open one up & look what's going on inside.

 

[AmericanEagle575]

Isn't this the same as a antron 99?? Sure looks like it too me!!

 

[The DB]

Just for completeness on Marconi's image of W8JI's site. If you change the height of that dipole, the gain will change. Changing the ground quality can have the same effect. Finally, it is referring to a horizontal dipole, a vertical dipole will have both a different amount of gain and radiation pattern as well. A vertical dipole also adds in the dilemma of should it be compared to the tip height, the base height, or something else? I am not arguing against what is said, I am just simply pointing this out as a extension/reference.

When it comes to President Himalaya's bandwidth, @AmericanEagle575 is right, it looks like a99 sized bandwidth. They probably used a similar matching system as the a99, which is little more than a glorified unun. Any other forms of matching would have the effect of narrowing this antenna's bandwidth pretty significantly...


The DB

 

[Marconi]

The instructions advise using rg213 as short as possible, so the wide bandwidth can't be lossy coax.

Just about everybody in the antenna business tells customers to use the shortest feed line possible.

The lossy coax was part of my story of an old experience Bob. That experience just produced similar symptoms with a very wide bandwidth and the old SD'r being very quiet...even when other folks on the air were complaining about the noise.

I also speculated to you a while back that the Vortex Q82M2, having a very broad bandwidth and claiming, it too, was also very quiet in operations, might be why Vortex made such claims. That reminded me of my old story about losses in some old coax, and losses is what I think I was seeing in my Eznec models too.

I wish I still had that old lossy coax, I might find it useful if I had just tested it more. Again, back then I wasn't interested or concerned about such issues.


Do you think the coax connection idea, for a rubber boot on the PL259 for the H WB, is a good idea?

 

[bob85]

Eddie,

I would put no stock in anything Vortex claimed other than the 3/8 cone gives wider low vswr bandwidth, you can mod a j-pole to do the same thing,

I had about 60% loss in a long run of rg58,
It gave me a wide bandwidth at the radio end & the loss never stopped me hearing & talking to anybody my locals could,

noise is the limiting factor in cb rx for most people over here nowadays, its MUCH higher than any receivers noise floor,

I never saw the rubber boot for the Himalaya when I looked at the antenna,
sirio have used a similar boot, I prefer liquid electrical tape or amalgamating tape,

 

[AudioShockwav]

The lossy coax was part of my story of an old experience Bob. That experience just produced similar symptoms with a very wide bandwidth and the old SD'r being very quiet...even when other folks on the air were complaining about the noise.

Eddie , when I first got my Intercepter 10K from Jay, testing was showing a very wide band width.
So wide in fact that I called Jay on the phone to talk to him about it.
His first question was about the coax.
The coax was Tandy ( radio shack), and had been up on a Ringo 10m antenna for years and seemed to work just fine, I was using the antenna on both 10 and 11 meters and it seemed to work well.
He recommended a new run of coax, so, 80 feet of new Belden coax installed and the SWR fell right were Jay told me it should be.
A deeper look at the old coax showed the shield had turned green under the jacket.
That coax was at least 10 years old.
Wish I had put the power meter at the other end to see what the losses were.
I talked all over the place on that ringo and never thought I had a problem as the antenna showed a wide low SWR bandwidth.

Live and learn.

73
Jeff

 

[Marconi]

Thanks for your story Jeff, that's pretty much what happened in my case too.

That Mini8 had a clear outer jacket and I could see areas that looked green in spots, and other areas that looked like copper wire all along the 100' feet. It was connected to an A99 for several years.

 

[freecell]

Marconi,

the copper metal in the shield braid reacts with oxygen, resulting in the formation of an outer layer of copper oxide, which appears green or bluish-green in color. this layer is known as the patina. unlike other destructive oxidation processes, the patina acts as a protective layer, and it does not cause any weakness in the metal. on the other hand, as the patina builds up it increases the surface resistance of the conductor, thus increasing the line loss attenuation which results in an abnormally low and wide swr bandwidth, which should not be considered as a good thing as it goes to antenna radiating efficiency. lossy feedline is just one of several causative factors linked to this phenomena and all of them decrease the radiation efficiency of the antenna load.