WorldwideDX Amateur Radio Forums

been looking into getting a new set of beams. currently I am using a maco Y quad intrested in the maco shooting star or the gizmotchy 4 any comments on these two.

It's hard to argue with the reputation of the Gizmotchy. Even Jo-Gunn copied the design with their Star series.

Still, I'd probably go with Maco's copy of the Moonraker IV. I do not have any personal experience with the Gizmotchy or ANY Jo-Gunn.

We had a guy here who had up a 4 element Jo-Gunn Star
series. Which looks like a Gizmotchy.
He disliked its local performance ability.
He changed it into a Jo-Gunn conventional 4 element, installed
in the Verticle position.
Which would be like a Maco 104.
He got better local performance.
DX performance he couldn't tell much difference/ maybe
alittle better on the Star series.
My opinion would be to purchase a Maco Shooting Star
over the Gizmotchy.

Once your signal bounces off the ionospere, its polarization is a crap shoot! You can be horizontal and the receiving station could hear you better on the vertical over their horizontal antenna.....or not! You never know!

As a rule, for shooting DX, it's best to have a horizontal antenna for transmission. Mainly because of how it interacts with the earth. By changing the height of a horizonal antenna above ground (earth), you can change the skip zone you are reaching.

Having both a horizontal and vertical for RECEIVE will give you the advantage to hear stations that others may miss with only a single polarization antenna.

My guess why the person was not impressed with the Gizmotchy/Jo-Gunn design locally is becasue these antennas are not true verticals (which we use for local communications). Neither are they true horizontal antennas. But once they "skip", who cares! As I said, it's a crap shoot!

Yeah your right on the crap shoot. To many things
a changing to compare antennas for the best DX.