Anyone use a Maco 5 Element M105??

[High Miler]

Been looking at adding one of these to the farm and was wondering if anyone had used one/heard one and how they worked... Seems it should put out one heckuva signal....

 

[DXman]

High Miller,
Have been using the Maco 5 since 2000. It has performed just fine for me, no complaints from this end!

I have only had mine horizontal but they should work just fine on vertical also.

 

[High Miler]

Appreciate that... I'm going vertical with mine... Should be up near the 100' mark when we get it up there on the tower that's being put in place right now... I want to use it for 10/11 Meters... We had a shooting star up but that was destroyed when we had a tornado touch down of 'Course...

 

[frmboybuck]

I ran one flat side with a Imax 2000 above that. Beam was at about 75'. It flat out smoked!!!

 

[Devildog]

Dxmans maco works great. I have more area right now and would like to get an antenna like that but I am in a valley and dont know how it would work out.

 

[DXman]

Devildog,
If on the "Flat side it should work with out much of a problem....unless you are tucked right up against a high mountain it may not work to good, but anywhere out in the open it should do a great job for you.

 

[High Miler]

I just want it to work local... What's better to go with... Flat or Vertical??

Skip isn't a priority with me for now....

 

[Highlander_821]

For local, definitely vertical. Unless most of your locals are running horizontal, then you would be ok horizontal talking to base stations that are also horizontal, but since most mobiles are vertical, you wouldn't be able to pick them up very far.

 

[Marconi]

If you mean local as in a city and less than 50 miles out, then this beam will be a bit of a waste. A good omni ground plane will do that without all the turning that working local within a city might entail.

Now if your out of town 50 miles or more then that is a horse of a different color, then you can pretty much cover a large city very effectively in one direction where the traffic is.

 

[High Miler]

Not really a waste here under 50 miles.... We have so many hills and valleys it's tough to work decent with a vertical.

I have a guy here that gives me a solid 2-3 S-Units better than his vertical... He's a little over 20 miles away... With the beam nice and clear with no Pre-amp.... With the Imax 2000 up 40' I have to turn the pre-amp which of 'course brings the background noise up... And not as clear or intelligible.

I figure for about $600.00 bucks I can get a decent install with everything I need... And will definately work nice with the 1.5Kw I have to pump into it.

There are stations here I can't work with a vertical at all that come in nicely with the Shooting star I had up until it got destroyed by wind.

Problem was... Some stations came in nice with Vertical, some with horizontal even though they were all vertically polarized... Go figure.

So we'll put it up in Vertical position and see what happens.