Antron 99 issues and woes

[Mudslinger]

Simon Ur5by said he tried 2 other radios

Sorry, didn't read the original post properly.

[108EH002]

Suppose we can let you off this time,it is Christmas Eve after all

[The Collector]

Best to flog your existing radio and just buy a Fidelity 1000. It'll mean you can hear everything on FM and all other modes at 30+ on any frequency, all at the same time...regardless of the condition of your aerial or coax.

Job done

[Chanty Wrassler]

Last year a friend gave me his old A99 which was down on performance and he'd decided to just buy a new one. He replaced his co-ax too, as the old stuff was definitely degraded when he examined it.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I accepted the A99 in the hope of being able to do something with it.
I found the connections between the sections were pretty ropey, as somebody had used steel washers which had simply rusted, of course. I'm fairly sure the sections weren't making such good contact as they should have. The main problem was the drain hole at the bottom - when it was installed far too much silicone grease had been applied to the connector and the whole recess at the base was filled with it, including the little hole. I'm sure the base had partially filled with water that had seeped in from the dodgy connections above and simply flooded the coax. Luckily for me, the water level wasn't high enough to corrode the internals of the antenna, as far as I know - you can't open these things up for inspection very easily.

I rubbed it down, gave it two coats of varnish and put it up on top of a 40ft pole, attached to 20m of RG213 military stuff. I also mounted the A99 in a PVC sleeve, thus isolating it from the mast.
It still sits there, perfectly happily knocking the socks off the 5/8 silver rod that's next to it.
I'm pretty pleased with its performance, for an antenna that cost me nothing

[Mudslinger]

Is the silver rod that you are comparing it to one of those Cheap Venom/Scorpion/Sigma thingies?

I went from an A99 to a Sirio 5/8 GPE and the improvement was huge.

[108EH002]

Is the silver rod that you are comparing it to one of those Cheap Venom/Scorpion/Sigma thingies?

I went from an A99 to a Sirio 5/8 GPE and the improvement was huge.

How big was the improvement from the GPE to your Imax Simon ? When I changed from an A.B.S. 1600 to an 827 the improvement was massive.Just using an Imax at present.

[Mudslinger]

I went from an A99 to the GPE5/8 and the improvement was around 2 s points on groundwave contacts.

[108EH002]

Ok thanks for the reply Simon.

[Chanty Wrassler]

Is the silver rod that you are comparing it to one of those Cheap Venom/Scorpion/Sigma thingies?

I went from an A99 to a Sirio 5/8 GPE and the improvement was huge.

I'm not sure of the make; it was quite lacking in any maker's sticker after several years in use. I could see it wasn't particularly expensive when new, though. Having said that, it's recently withstood 80mph gusts and only has a slight bowing in it now. I'd seriously expected it to snap.
The 5/8s performance will improve this summer once I take it down for a thorough cleaning, and re-mount it at the same height as the A99, and also ditch the nasty cheap RG58 its fed with for some decent ex-mil RG213.