Maybe it's more an in-the-eye-of-the-beholder sort of thing then lol. My first rule of antennas is "put up what stays up, and stays up every time". That of course, is my /P influence talking, so the rules are a little different for me: - The Buddipole may just look nicely packaged, but in actually it really is as well built as it looks. Unlike the typical DIY project it really truly doesn't break on you way out in the mountains in some way you never would have thought of unless you've built it 50 times already before. It's already got all that experience behind it and yes I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that thoughtfulness in it when I first took it out of the bag. - The Buddipole is NOT small. With the 9' whips, you can deploy a full length dipole on 15 meters and up. And on 20 it's not that far off from full length and performs really well. - if you need REALLY big, a longwire inverted V is a simple matter to DIY with the "Versatee" and the mast by itself. You could even buy ready-made counterpoises from BP but I made mine out of 140' or so of speaker wire, bolts and hot melt glue using existing parts that came with my BP. Works great on 30M on down with the tuners in my rigs. I think it was an extra $10 to do the whole thing.
So it just depends on what your needs are. I need something that can withstand throwing around, dropping, and repeated over and over deployment/takedown without something wearing out or snapping off or locking up when I'm 20 miles from home 11,000 feet in the mountains. I could have DIY'ed something that did the same thing but the cost would have come out the same in the end and I'd have likely made mistakes that BP has already made and solved. So I just bought it already made from BP. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for DIY; heck I've built 2 K2's already hi hi. But when something is a quality product, it's a quality product and that's just the truth about the BP, IMO. 73 LS W5QD Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT wrote > The first rule of antennas is "put up the biggest thing you possibly > can, and if it stays up, it was too small." > > The Buddipole is SMALL. > > That's why I don't have one. > > The other reason, it seems to me that you're paying a premium for a > nicely packaged units. > > I have a 33 foot collapsible kite pole off of eBay, some heavy velcro > straps from a big box home improvement store, and some wire. > > The Buddipole may be a good buy, especially for those who don't want to > put a kit together, but I think the "best money you'll ever spend" is a > little bit over the top. -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/New-KX3-up-running-tp7617152p7617179.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
