Tom's remarks are right on, but from an actual use perspective the Carolina
Windom works rather well. You'll need your auto-tuner for most the bands.
I had a month to evaluate antennas two years ago and had the entire Radio
Works line, the Cushcraft R-7 and R-5, and the Hygain DX-77 at my
Breckenridge, Colorado, QTH. I had a working vacation from Russia and had
the following observations.
The R-7, R-5, and DX-77 were all mounted on a Radio Shack 38' push-up mast
at about 40' above ground. The mast was on my back deck which was about 7'
above ground level. The Radio Works antennas were in two configurations.
The first was strung between two very tall lodgepole pines at about 60'.
The other configuration as suspended from a central point at about 70' in a
droopy "V" but the ends were still about 50' high..
I did direct comparisons with stations on all continents, especially JA and
Indonesia. Lots of US comparisons as well on both coasts.
The best antenna from Radio Works was by far the "SuperLoop." About one
S-unit better than the verticals in the favored direction and extremely
quiet, but very defined nulls in the loop's plane. Second best was their
"80M wire Beam" which is sort of like a short Bobtail. Both of these
antennas showed lobes and nulls which differed by band but were overall good
performers. The Carolina Windom was equal to the verticals in most areas
and sometimes 1/2 to 1 S-unit better on the higher bands in certain
directions but then 1/2 to 1 S-unit below the verticals in other directions.
The R-7 and the DX-77 were the best DX antennas on 40 which was expected due
to their low take-off angles. Of course, I must preface that statement with
the fact that my front door in Breckenridge is almost 10,000' above sea
level. Since then, I have used various variations of these antennas both
here on Casey Key Island in Florida (direct Ocean front) and in Russia.
Everything seems to work well here with the excellent ocean ground,
especially the verticals.
The Super Loop works very well and is more resistant to QRN than the
verticals if you have room to put it up. It's quite large and needs to be
up high to really be effective. I used a variation of this loop cut for 40
meters this past CW SS for QRP operation in KY and it worked very well but
the directivity was very noticeable. Our Club also used a variation of this
loop this past FD in our QRP operation and it was an excellent performer.
For what they are, the verticals work well and offer good matching on all
design bands but are a little noisy. I've always had the best results
getting them up at least 33' above ground. In Russia I had them at 150'
above ground mounted about 15' above an angled tin roof. There, the R-7
sometimes outperformed my A4S, but I expect the A4S had losses in the tin
roof since it was only 10' above the roof as well as path differences in
polarization.
There. A non-technical experience observation.
BTW, I love my 402CD! It's the best antenna I've used on 40 except for a
rhombic I had a few years ago, but then I couldn't rotate the rhombic.
Jon Hamlet, W4ZW
Casey Key Island, Florida
"A little bit of paradise in the Gulf of Mexico"
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