Hello to all, This is just my opinion but since the new style harnesses have been installed on all of the new DB-224s, i have found that the patterns and recieve /transmit ranges have changed drastically for the worse!!!! I have replaced harnesses and also complete swap-out of some antennas and have found the ranges greatly reduced. i confirmed this by reinstalling the original antennas and or harness and quickly went back to the original performance ( it doesn't look good when a lightning dammaged 4-bay antenna outperforms a brand new 8-bay antenna). The harnesses were replaced because of lighting damages ( high SWR) but still had good rx . on the complete antenna replacements, i had actually swapped out DB-228s to improved the range for handhelds in the field but saw a reducedction in range for both bases, mobiles and handhelds.
The new harnesses are using a stub tuning to make it easier for the non-technical people down in Mexico to put these antennas out the door quickly but only hinders the performanace of the antennas. my first time installing one of these stub tuned DB-228s caused me to send the antenna back to the ground 3 times , while arguing with the ground crew that They sent up the wrong section 1st( all eight bays should be in the same radiating plane not half up/half down) after numerous calls with DB Products about this with very little response, they said that the stub, change the timing of the rf wave using a a time diversity inversion to actually put all the bays in phase <DELAY LINES> , although half of them were inverted.. BULLL CRAP!!!!!! all it did was screw things up. the reason they did it this way, was to simplfy the building of the antennas. by grossly underpaid below the border non-technical labor. It is easier to tell or show someone to build all the antennas the same way and just invert one half of the antenna to make a DB-228 by putting together (2) DB-224s without having to completely build a seperate antenna with the bays oriented to match the other half. i have taken two of these new style DB-228s and reconfigutreed the bays on the lower half to match the upper half and you guessed it. the performance is back where it should be. As for the water ingress problem with DB-224/228 harnesses, i have always used "Liquid Tape" and Scotch "88" tape to seal all the connections and molded joints on these antennas ( I don't use "Scotch-Kote as it eventually dries out, becomes brittle and disentigrates in the weather( it is fine for use in partially exposed enviroments, but just doesn't standup to the liquid tape for longivity, in the weather!!! I try not to leave anything to chance. Some people would say that this defeats the chance of recurring revenue, but i look at it this way, if i seal it up right the first time and never have to do maintenance on it, then that speaks well of my installation and i stand a better chance of getting more work from those customers than if i did a marginal job and had to keep returning to fix a recurring proplem for an unhappy customer, at my expense !!!!! anyhow enough of my my ramblings for this episode. if you have time to play with a DB-228(new style, experiment with it and i think you will agree with me. if not, then "MY BADDD!!" To each his own. CUL tyrone N5XES
