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Cobwebb at a price
11 December 2012 | by Lamco have added a new product to their range. A Cobwebb antenna. It goes under the name of a MyHam HF-7B and it is specified as an antenna with a useful range of 20/17/15/12/10/6/4m bands.
I noticed this in the latest Practical Wireless and thought I’d email a copy to Mike Corke, ZS1RJQ who has now made 6 of these. We are both users of the Cobwebb but both of us have homebrewed versions. I was interested to see how much his cost to make and like me, he spent about £40 making each of his. Mine was a little dearer on account of me making a few experiments along the way. We both had a little chuckle at the cost of this commercial version at £249.
If you need an HF antenna then it seems that the commercial versions are very expensive and homebrew antennas cost a bit in time but a lot less in terms of £. I buy my bits and pieces from all sorts of places but AMTools / Spratreader on eBay has all the bits you need for the hardware for a much lower price. If you don’t see what you need then just email him and I’m sure he’ll be able to help.
If homebrew isn’t your thing then there isn’t much of an option. But it seems it’ll cost you for a simple piece of hardware. I’m sure if I were to every build my own rig it’ll look like a dogs breakfast and perform in a similar fashion but simple bits of wire shouldn’t cost that much.
(Just to clarify I’m not singling out any one supplier, but just observing that off the shelf stuff can cost a fortune compared to home made stuff.)
4 Responses to “Cobwebb at a price”
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Hello Alex
I agree, I am allways amazed at the prices that are charged for antennas. I could possibly understand for things like UHF Yagis etc which can be quite difficult to design and construct to a similar standard but surely not for simple wire antennas like the G5RV and Windom (around £50 and £120 advertised in a well known emporium)
Still I suppose as long as people continue to pay such high prices suppliers will happily charge them.
Regards
Kevin
G6UCY
I recently built mine (the G3TXQ single-wire version) for about £50 – I opted to get a multi-pack of PVC tube and a large reel of wire, so I suppose about £40 if it were costed “pro-rata”. A cheap project and a great learning-curve, plus fun to build.
Did anybody else notice the first picture they used for this product? It was, ahem, borrowed from a well-known CobWebb constructor’s website.
My XYL always asks me how come I took up such an expensive hobby. I can’t really answer her. I bought my Hustler 6-BTV for around £85 in the US when I was over there a few years ago and they are £250 here. I did save on the shipping though but still expensive.
I enjoyed making mine and learning about it. I have a single wire one in the loft and it is a great performer and proved itself during the CQWW ssb contest.
I’m happy to support development of new ‘stuff’ but am loathed to pay for simply importing gear. Especially as you can get a lot of the hardware from other suppliers (Aerial Parts in Colchester – Thanks Charlie)
Talking of supporting ‘stuff’. Thanks for the great logging application Charlie. I picked up a copy yesterday.
pela primeira vez cheguei aqui,parabéns.
Eu tenho algumas cobwebb homebrew,mas do g3txq não tenho ,embora esteja a começar a primeira.Diga-me caro Alex,qual das versões tem os 6 m e 4m?
Eu tambem quro experimentar construir um Cobwebb para os 30 e 40 m,suponho que não deve dar bem acopladas nas normais por causa das harmonicas.
Concordo plenamente que na EU (Portugal é pior) a nossa classe (radioamadores)
somos altamente explorados.
Bem Haja por ter criado esta página,temos mostrar o nosso descontentamento.
Abraço de Leonel Neves (Facebook)CT2FPY.