Antenna arrived a little more than a week after I ordered it in a brand new box that only had a few scuffs from it being shipped. When I opened the box I noticed that the padded bag fit in it perfectly, so I’m keeping the box as an extra precaution to keep even the bag looking pristine. First impression? As you can tell, I’m a person who really scrutinizes appearance, as well as performance. The padded bag has enough padding to keep everything from getting dents or nicks during just about any type of trek to a camping site or just from being in the trunk of a car. The double stitching and webbed handles and shoulder strap look like they’ll hold up for my lifetime of use. I would have liked that the clips that hold the shoulder strap on be made of metal instead of the nylon infused plastic clips that they appear to made out of. Though the extra padded pouch on the front of the bag is a neat added feature.

Overall, the entire antenna system has good construction with an overall appearance that is as good as the best I’ve seen. The front facing pouch contained the manual and the transmatch, which is used to tune the antenna system. The lined inner pouch contained the tripod, the stainless steel whip, and ‘radiating elements’. At the end of each radiating element is a metal nail like spike that is fully insulated from the radiating elements. Once the spikes are in the ground, then the radiating elements form the guy wires that extend from the mount where they are affixed with o-rings and shrink tubing. Also at the mount is where you screw the stainless steel whip, which is very heavy duty, even at the base of the whip. Under the mount and at the antenna is where the Alpha Match transmatch/tuner is and should be mounted. The Alpha Match conveniently attaches with the adapters that are built into the match and mount. Once setup (about a 5 minute process), the whole antenna system extends 8.5 feet on an excellently designed aluminum tripod system.

How does it work compared to my other portable antenna systems? I’m not going to name the manufacturers of my other two portable antenna systems that I’ve used for 2 years in this review, but suffice to say that they are two of the most popular ones made for amateur radio. My first impression of the audio was that the noise floor of the QRM was lower than my other antennas. I tuned to a signal on 40 meters that was about an S6 and swapped the coax to my other antennas. The S6 dropped to an S5 on one of the antennas and stayed at about an S6 on the other one, however, the noise was up about 2 S units on the other antennas. After the QSO was over I was hearing I made a CQ and both of the operators came back to me. We talked for 30 minutes about signal strengths, antenna types, and such. The first operator was using a 40 meter horizontal loop at 30 feet in their trees and gave me an S7, which was the same I was reading them at nearly 900 miles away. The second gave me an S8, while they were also an S7, and were using a 43 foot S9 antenna. Now that I’ve owned the ProMaster for a several months now, I’ve generally found it to be my go to antenna. Since having it, I’ve had DX coming in strong from Europe and by simply chaining the placement of the radiating elements, I log plenty of Australian contacts. It’s great to have an easy to use antenna that works as well as this one does. I also want to comment on how small the bag is that this antenna system fits into. I can take it anywhere!
KA6UTD