Flagpole antenna

[N8RPY]

I have no resolve. I gave up and charged back Greyline as they never responded to my emails or voicemails after 2 months.
Went back to my Dipole. Waiting on a Alpha HOA Buster Gutter Antenna. I have a 2 story house and at 230 FT Elevation in Florida, hopefully it works.

 

[nl7qf]

I have no resolve. I gave up and charged back Greyline as they never responded to my emails or voicemails after 2 months.
Went back to my Dipole. Waiting on a Alpha HOA Buster Gutter Antenna. I have a 2 story house and at 230 FT Elevation in Florida, hopefully it works.

Ive put a lot of money trying to get this 24' to work . It basicslly just tunes on 20 meter . With a mfj 998 tuner. Not a trust worthy company at all and even as a flagpole it sucks. Do buy their lies.

 

[prcguy]

I have no resolve. I gave up and charged back Greyline as they never responded to my emails or voicemails after 2 months.
Went back to my Dipole. Waiting on an Alpha HOA Buster Gutter Antenna. I have a 2 story house and at 230 FT Elevation in Florida, hopefully it works.

Alpha Antenna is near the bottom of my list for deceptive advertising, wrong info and poor performance. You could simply get a 5:1 balun and connect to your rain gutter downspout and use an actual ground rod instead of a cheap gutter nail for grounding and have the same thing. If you have metal gutters of reasonable length and they are all bonded together it can work ok but you will most likely need a tuner.

 

[nl7qf]

same here , greyline performance flagpole antennias are a sham . its not even a good flag pole🤬

 

[VA6ORO]

I've been offline for many years and am just getting back into the hobby. I bought a 24 foot "flagpole"antenna with an MFJ auto tuner and am having a lot of trouble with SWR. I have my antenna connected to ladder line to a balun. From there to the auto tuner, than about 200' of coax to my shop, then to a MFJ bias tee to my SWR meter to my transceiver. On trying to auto tune on AM or CW I'm getting readings of 5 or higher. I removed the auto tuner and bias tee and tried running it through an MFJ 949 tuner which won't even show any SWR readings or any other info. My coax is buried and pretty old. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

I see you posted nearly two years ago. My experience with my 16' Greyline has mostly been good (except for customer service, which is terrible). My setup is about four years old. My problems started when I got an amp this spring. My setup is 16' Greyline to a generic coil provided by Greyline, to a 998rt tuner, MFJ-4117 Bias-T, to Icom PW-2 amp to Icom 7300 radio. My PW-2 has a built in tuner, which I engage after the 998rt has tuned. But, about three weeks ago, the amp stopped tuning, and the ALC will not run properly. If I try to run the amp, it immediately goes into "Protect" mode and shuts down when I try to transmit. Diagnosing things has been a challenge, so now I'm replacing ancillary components hoping to find the fault. My 103' of coax is good. The 998rt tuner seems good. I've taken the cover off and the readings look good. I am replacing the ladder line with some rated to 3000 watts, and replacing the generic coil with a Palomar 5000 watt 1:1 balun at the base of the flagpole. Also replacing the Alpha Delta surge protector. The weather in Calgary is terrible, but I should be able to report back in a couple weeks with results.

 

[VA6ORO]

I'm finally back up and running, and all the components seem to be working properly. When I replaced the ladder line, I found that one side had melted through and separated. Also, the old, generic coil was charred inside. Obviously, a lot of my RF energy was being converted to heat. My MFJ tuner and Bias-T seem to be fine. Mustang, I would suggest that you try new coax. Or test the old one with a RigExpert or similar analyzer. My coax is LRM-400 that I've tested at a loss of 0.84 Db/100'. Spec is 0.70 Db/100'. The SWR is a little high, around 2.0 or a little lower, but these flagpoles are a compromise for those of us with HOA's.

The only other thing I still have to replace is the Alpha Delta surge protector, but I really don't think the old one is defective.

 

[K7GPS]

Great Rx. Lousy Tx. Recently invested time, energy, and more $$ into my two-year old 24ft Greyline flagpole antenna. I moved it to 17ft from the house, a 2-story stucco finish (think chicken wire), replaced the coax with new LMR-400, and added an MFJ 998BRT at the base and Bias-T switch in the shack. Best SWR is 3-4:1. Can't use the amp at all. Operate mostly FT8 on 40-10M, and make lots of contacts, receive dB is great, but contacts almost always report me -10 to -20dB. On a rare occasion I get a +dB report back. SSB is a waste of effort, as I don't compete with others and usually get a 45 RST. Depressing. HOA, so am restricted to what antenna(s) I can install.

 

[prcguy]

Great Rx. Lousy Tx. Recently invested time, energy, and more $$ into my two-year old 24ft Greyline flagpole antenna. I moved it to 17ft from the house, a 2-story stucco finish (think chicken wire), replaced the coax with new LMR-400, and added an MFJ 998BRT at the base and Bias-T switch in the shack. Best SWR is 3-4:1. Can't use the amp at all. Operate mostly FT8 on 40-10M, and make lots of contacts, receive dB is great, but contacts almost always report me -10 to -20dB. On a rare occasion I get a +dB report back. SSB is a waste of effort, as I don't compete with others and usually get a 45 RST. Depressing. HOA, so am restricted to what antenna(s) I can install.

I've run very short HF verticals as in insulating a 20ft pushup mast (19 actual ft) on a 125ft X 225ft commercial steel roof and with an SCC 230 auto tuner at the base. It worked waaaaay better than I could ever imagined and I also had a ZS6BKW dipole on the same roof at 20ft to compare with. Even 80m worked suprisingly well with that 19ft tall antenna.

Two things made it work, a lot of ground plane and an antenna tuner. If I used a balun at the antenna and a tuner in the shack it would have been crap. If it had a tuner and no ground plane as in mounted in dirt it would have worked like crap.