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I built and tested the antenna at the QTH of Chris, G0DWV, where he has an extensive antenna farm and a trailermounted Versatower that was used for the Dual Beam Pro. The Dual Beam Pro arrived in two boxes – one long tube containing the radiating elements and a smaller box with the balun and mounting hardware. However, ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating and tests showed the antenna to be a good performer. The worst case scenario was less than 2dB loss on 10m (28MHz) using 20m of RG213 coax.
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Pro Antennas uses a low-loss balun and the low-ish SWR on the (relatively short) feedline means that any losses are minimised. Indeed, this is what I thought, but the tests showed that these fears were largely unfounded. Now, the purists will already be pointing out that you may get losses in the balun, the non-resonant nature of the antenna may rob you of an S-point or two, and the resultant higher SWR on the feedline may result in losses. Therefore, you should rotate the antenna to get the best results. This was also seen by me when I modelled the Dual Beam Pro in the MMANA-GAL antenna modelling software. These can easily amount to 10-48dB (2-8 S-points) depending on the band and height above ground (as confirmed in Carl's tests with Mike, G3SED). But at take-off angles less than 10° (such as needed for DX) you can see the nulls off the ends of the antenna quite clearly. At higher radiation angles the Dual Beam Pro starts to become more omnidirectional when mounted at a height of, say, 10m. Also, the capacity hat end loading makes the overall length shorter. With the Dual Beam Pro, its non-resonant nature and impedance transformer means that you can find a match more easily, the construction becomes much simpler and the antenna much lighter.
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The result can be quite a heavy, complex antenna that still needs to be rotated to give 360° coverage. Plus, to get five band operation (20m-10m) you normally need either traps, parallel-fed radiators or some other form of matching to get the SWR down to 1:1 on each of the bands. This means that when fixed in any one direction you will find that signals being received ‘off the ends’ will be down considerably – perhaps by up to 3 or 4 S-points. Carl points out that with a conventional half-wave dipole you get significant nulls off the ends. At first glance you may wonder why Pro Antennas has taken this approach to the design, but on closer inspection it all becomes clear. It has been specifically designed to be non-resonant on any of the amateur bands, but uses a balun/impedance transformer at the feed point to lower the resultant SWR down to a more manageable level. The antenna is effectively a non-resonant dipole with capacity hat end loading.
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The Dual Beam Pro from Pro Antennas is Carl, G4GTW's latest creation, aimed at amateurs who want to get a five-band antenna in as small and light a package as possible. 32 REVIEW STEVE NICHOLS, G0KYA ♦ E-MAIL: MAY 2011 ♦ RADCOM The Dual Beam Pro A small and light five band antenna from Pro Antennas PHOTO 1: The completed Dual Beam Pro.