New super antenna

[OTTER]

Anybody heard any reviews or have any experience with this antenna?

http://www.scannermaster.com/store/04-540706.html

 

[Tweekerbob]

This antenna is neither new nor super.

It has been around for awhile and its performance is near that of one of those crazy looking scantenna thingys. It will NOT yield any impressive performance on any of its "bands". When comparing it to a discone on a completely random basis in terms of your receiving frequency, you should receive equal or near equal results.

If you really want a ferret, I'll sell you two furry animals for the price of this one.

In any event, I would always be leary of any website that so liberally uses quotation marks to define the highlights of its produtcs; (and poor grammer to boot...quote:" The "Ferret" can be modified on a "custom" bases to cover most special frequency requirements." (Apparently they are unsure of the name of this product))

Get a dictionary guys and cover your basis.

Ryan

 

[OTTER]

Wow, suprised to hear that since scanner master is one of the biggest sponsors of this web site!! So you think the discone such as diamonds 130 would do just as well for recieving? Thanks for the input.

 

[baybum]

Grammer is spelled grammar. According to the dictionary.

 

[crashcrew]

...and leary is spelled leery, according to the dictionary :lol:

 

[DaveH]

Spelling aside, it would be interesting to see some real technical specs (not just center frequencies) for this antenna, considering the price. I am of a similar opinion, any antenna covering so many bands is unlikely to particularly stellar on any one.

Dave

 

[MacombMonitor]

Wow, suprised to hear that since scanner master is one of the biggest sponsors of this web site!! So you think the discone such as diamonds 130 would do just as well for recieving? Thanks for the input.

Scanner Master doesn't manufacture them, they are just distributing them.

 

[MacombMonitor]

Grove Enterprises used to advertise the Austin Ferret for years! About four years ago, I attempted to order one. Grove no longer carried them. I contacted someone at Grove who claimed they didn't sell well because they were so expensive. It also sounded like the manufacture didn't allow much profit margin for the distributor to make it worth while. In addition to that, it's about eight feet long! It requires special (expensive) UPS shipping. I then tried to contact the manufacture direct, and buy one from them. They said estimated shipping time would be 4~6 weeks! When I asked why it took so long, the young lady indicated in a round-a-bout way, that it had to be made, and they guy who makes them does it when he gets around to it. I ordered one anyway. A month later I called to get a status. They had not even started on it, and said it could be another eight weeks! That left me unimpressed for the price, so I cancelled the order.

Recently I inquired here on RR about the Ferret, and the bottom line was...its ok for the bands it's designed for, but not the best performer in the 850MHz area. So I passed on it again.

Here is a link with a cut-away picture, and some info:

http://www.rfwiz.com/AustinAntenna/AustinAntennaFerret.htm

 

[DPD1]

It also sounded like the manufacture didn't allow much profit margin for the distributor to make it worth while.

I remember the first time I looked at that, I wondered how they would make any money at all. I kind of feel for the designer. It's a very complex design, and has to be extremely labor intensive to make. To top it off, you're only going to sell so many. Similar multi band verticals for ham use are hundreds of dollars. The problem is, it's basically a vertical design broken up into different sections, so it's probably not going to be very resonant outside those sections. That's fine for covering about 5 MHz. It will certainly still work past that, but just not as well as a lot of people would want unfortunately. Scanning is extremely hard to design for, because most people want one 'do it all' type, but it's impossible to cover large chunks of bandwidth AND have tons of gain in one design. Just a law of nature.

Dave
-DPD Productions - Custom Scanner, MURS, & GMRS Antennas-
http://eje.railfan.net/dpdp/

 

[Al42]

Here is a link with a cut-away picture, and some info:

http://www.rfwiz.com/AustinAntenna/AustinAntennaFerret.htm

It's a bunch of parallel half-wave dipoles with a "by-guess-and-by-gosh" matching scheme that's pretty narrow-band. A simple parallel dipole or ground plane using large diameter elements (something like a Scantenna) would work much better.