Taurus JN-316 HF/6M 3.5-57MHz Fiberglass Base Antenna

Mounted this antenna at 20' AGH on a 33" J-Pipe Mount under the eave, SWR is 1:1 on 12M to 40M, all other bands are below 1:1.5 (using an auto tuner). For FT8 set your ALC around 20% and work the world on 30W, this antenna performs as well as my end fed random wire antenna! Be sure to add a 1:1 Unun before the tuner because your coax is the counterpoise. This antenna was easy to put together, might purchase another one just for Field Day. Don't hesitate getting one, it's well worth the cost. 73

After having this in use for a few months I feel that I can give you a Idea of my feelings on the antenna. The antenna is as budget cost some where around $120.00 US and is good from 80m to10m. 160m and 6m it gets a bit hard to tune. so if you need something on the outside of the 80m and 6m you should look at something else. I live in PR and use a X6100 at 5watts and have worked over 8000 ft8 and QSO'S in 123 countries over past three months, some as far as over 11000km. The antenna is mounted with Tapcons on a con-create wall roof of a 2story building. In PR we are at the edge of the world being just north of the 18 degrees lat.

When first installed this antenna worked well and easily tuned up using both a manual and automatic tuners, but over a short period of time, it stopped being able to be tuned by the auto-tuner and all the manual tuner settings changed. I have yet to troubleshoot and see what has changed, other than swappig out coax, which made no difference.if you buy one of these, be cautious as I suspect the balun is not as waterproofed as it needs to be.

It worked great for about three months, but now I can't get a workable swr. It is so bad, my Drake tuner started to smoke. I've used that Drake tuner for over 15 years, never ever had a problem like this. I bet these will not come back in stock because they are a crap shoot if you will get a good one. Don't buy, don't buy.

This antenna was a great value for me. I was looking specifically for a HF receive antenna for SDR use and to use as an HF noise cancelling antenna for use with my QRM Eliminator box. It does a fantastic job at both tasks. As far as tuning for transmit, I can tune it with the built in ATU on my radio for 40-10m. You cannot and would probably not want to tune this up on 80m unless you're trying to talk to someone down the street. It's just not going to give you any performance at that frequency. To get the best performance link the aluminum mount at the base of the antenna to your antenna mounting pole with a strong connection and then earth ground the pole. Tightening the antenna mount with just the brackets isn't enough conductivity especially if you have a painted mast. Drill and tap the mount and electrically connect it with a short wire jumper. I saw a dramatic difference on my antenna analyzer when I did that.

Not sure why some other buyers of this antenna have had so many bad experiences with missing hardware and bad packaging or non-working.Mine came shipped with reinforced ends on the box and exactly the right amount of hardware to mount it.It went up in minutes and very little tuning on 20 and 40 meter to get around 1.1:1 swr.NOTE: It does benefit from an earth ground since the UNUN at the base of the end-fed vertical is 9:1 ratio and requires a ground but don't try grounding thru the aluminum mounting bracket because it is isolated from the antenna. Best to use a large alligator clip or battery clamp on the outside of the PL-259, a short length of heavy copper braid or 10awg wire to a convenient ground or bare metal rod or pipe driven approx. 12" into nearby soil. Be sure to keep the wire or braid as short as possible.

I installed the antenna three days ago. It is mounted about 18 inched off the ground on a 3/4 inch galvanized pipe driven into the ground. No instruction came with the antenna. I did however read the reviews here and for a similar product sold elsewhere. When installing the antenna I used Noalox Antioxidant compound at the junction of the lower to mid and mid to upper sections on the threads to prevent failure due to oxidation. The antenna is fed with RG-316 into my radio shack. I was able to auto-tune on all bands from 80 to 10 meters with my TS-440SAT and with my TS-940SAT. I found no need to separately ground or provide a counter poise for operation. I would recommend the antenna for the price and simplicity.

This is NOT an all band antenna. It's basically a 20m antenna that will work on other frequencies. See the pic with my swr measurements. Several frequencies will not work well. You may be able to time it to make the radio happy but I seriously doubt your radiated power will be worth anything. But I use it for everything around 20m just fine. I don't have a way to test the radiated power so I can't say if it is working good or not as I don't have another antenna to compare. This goes by several names. Moonraker is one of them. You do need to inspect the transformer as there are many reports of bad wiring. It is tunable by changing the whip length. I'd set it for the middle of 20m. This is one of those 1/2 antenna that does require a long coax for the other half of the antenna. There is no such thing as a radial free antenna. Stop with the marketing lie. The coax is your radial. And not a very good one. All in all I would suggest it for sometime on a budget just getting started.