The gainmaster is the best performing white stick we have ever tested, half a dozen + locals use them and get better results than their old antennas except one who swapped from a vector 4000 to a gainmaster and lost a little but gained bandwidth,
In my own tests the gainmaster was a hair behind the I-10k, if they would take more power I would have one, I like the bandwidth, light weight and they are more neighbour friendly,
The reason it has not replaced all the other white sticks in this area are twofold,
They snap in high winds more easily than the a99 / imax or 827,
that could be due to how they are assembled as its very easy to crush the pipes by over tightening the hose clamps & some people ignore the suggested overlap on the tubes, at least two have snapped due to assembler error,
it could also be how stiff the mounting pole is, rigid masts put more stress on the antenna,
Some locals don't want them because they don't like high power, even 300w from a kl500 on FM has the vswr climbing on long overs,
people using proper amplifiers would burn them up in a heartbeat,
The vortex would be more suitable for guys that want to run higher power but not very high power like the USA antenna its based on, its an improvement on the stub match Q64,
The stauff clamp brace across the Fiberglas insulator won't do much other than catch snow/ice,
If the insulator had not been bolted so close to the tube ends and a quality rod used like the I-10k there would be no need for any brace, a Fiberglas rod is much stronger than the tubes its supporting, even vortex's high quality tube,
My friend up the road just bought the vortex Q82, odd length radials, stupidly overengineered fat spreaders at a high voltage node waiting to catch snow/ice,
The BS advertising for the Q82 makes me laugh.
