A very good day everybody my name's Callum from DX Commander and i am now starting to
get emails going i'm a bit confused i don't know which DXCommander to buy - i think it's quite
important we run through this because i've got a range of vertical antennas and - kind of a lot of
people think well they're basically the same they kind of are but they got some there's some nuances
okay so i think what we should do is run through the new nuances and work out what's right so first
first of all what is the dx commander now i've done a couple of videos i'll try and
remember to put a card somewhere up for you here maybe in the description of how i mean it's just
quite interesting topic of how the idea came to be right but basically we've heard of a fan
dipole haven't we where you've got a center feed point you might have a 40 meter element and then
a 20 meter element under it well this is kind of similar i mean it's not a vertical fan dipole but
it's kind of similar where we've got our coax i'll just check that that camera's recording and it's
in the right place coax coming along we've got the ground all right and then go blue for some
reason and then we've got a single to start with a single element let's say for 40 meters
and then i started to come up with ideas or what happens if you attach to that feed point
let's say 20 and off the other side we could have let's say 17 and then front to back you know you
probably can't see it you could you know you have 12 and 10 and you have 30 meters yeah all sorts
i've got a couple of pictures here on the screen i mean that's it at the base plate
where you can see all the elements are rising up from the feed point which will be
somewhere around here if i can click a button and show you there there's a feed point
just on the right hand side of that picture you get an s0239 you know and you coax
little jumper lead look coming to the to the the driven plate and then the ground plate where we
just we just put a few holes and four connectors and we can connect you know 60 radials or whatever
how many radials and all that i've done before you to surf through the channel and you'll find them
so that's the concept i'll see if there's any more pictures there's kind of a built one you can see
all the radials coming out for the bottom all the elements coming straight up i mean yeah for
this build i just used some kids bracelets stuff you know um yeah and there we are it's going up
this happens to be in fact this happens to be the rapide we'll come to that in a minute the first
one i designed was off the back of a call it a 10 meter pole it's not 10 meters it's actually 9.5
which is actually fantastic whatever that is in peach but fact 9.5 is great because it means we
forgot 9.5 well maybe it's 9.29.3 but we go up to the top and then come back a little bit there's
a little bit of trickery we just happen to get 40 and 15 on the same out same element we're kind of
getting a compressed three-quarter wave actually on 15 which is why it performs so well it's
just an accident all right they all are quarter waves there's no component wizardry or anything
what goes in goes out all right you've got a great ground everybody will hear you that's well why
we've sold maybe i don't know 3 000 of these or something you know i'm going to tell you a
story about a contestation that also has got a dx commander on a switch because sometimes he can't
whiz around you know his big big tower you know 200 foot clicks to that because you know i can
still hear him i'll give him a quick call go back to where i was doing but there we are let's
get down to brass tacks so i've on here is the listing for the dx commander
classic all right if i go to the bottom there's probably some fairly old pictures from my garden
there is and you can see it here and this was originally designed for 40 and up so let's get
a new piece of paper ready and i'm going to put the classic there all right we'll call it classic
which was 40 and up oh come on how we get 80 on most of these as well on a minute but
that was what it was designed for that's the neatest looking way you can get it so that was the
classic then we add another antenna and in fact not quite sure the pro i'll do the prices maybe in
the description there's not a lot between this and the the expedition which is fundamentally the same
right but it's based on a smaller compact pole so uh let's find some pictures of this you will
often notice that the expedition's got slightly less elements right it's more of a whiz-bang
quick holiday caravan portabelli thing in fact tom rollins i'll see if i can remember to put his
channel in the description he did a little blog he did four quite intense blogs where he walks around
the isle of aaron with a with an expedition i mean that's it there it's not one of tom's pictures
and every day about lunchtime put it up and then every morning he took it back down put it in his
backpack and he walked another 10 miles let's say so that that was tom he actually told me
he's got that down to seven minutes i kind of didn't believe him but he said he's gonna come
down with his gear and we'll film it and uh our aim is probably more than that nine
but tom honestly i mean you know once you get used to it and i showed them a couple of tricks
not for today but i'll come up with those tricks shortly expedition so it's the same size
it's when it's when it's up but instead of being four foot long or 120 centimeters
it's half that all right so it's just over two foot long when it's collapsed but there's
17 small sections thinner tubing of course it has to be because it's all going to fit inside
roughly the same diameter at the bottom different components whatever else and again that is 40 plus
you pick your bands i think you were allowed 14 15 and another three bands so most people
would do they wanted all of it they'd do 40 and 15 20 and we're allowed another two
say 17 and 10. we did 10 on this they're fantastic in the hills yeah i will try and find that as well
and put a link to that in the description we did great on 10. anyway the factory got
to touch him he said look so all these are call them 9.5 that's the length right 9.5
9.5 they came up and they said we've got a seven meter poles put this in blue so it's a bit smaller
would you you know like a couple of samples same as the classic in fact it's the top
certain sections of the the classic so that one is here we've already had a little brief look at
this there's a larger it's about half the weight actually even though
vodkas most of the materials in the bottom three sections seven meters and i i i spent oh
i i tried to launch the seven meter bowl a few times it all was flopped and until i realized
in fact what we could do is we could make this a dedicated 30 plus we can get 40 on this too
i'm telling you what it was originally designed for and that is seven meters okay same thing
seven meters so that is what i call the classic range okay i'm not gonna label it
you're intelligent enough right so how do we get 80 on this one here we basically are using we go
up i think seven meters and go along 12 and and we don't use the 30 meter element and that gives us
80. as an inverted low tons of people use them as inverted l's doesn't look super pretty but it does
the job right because the pole bends over a bit you know with extra wire whatever and then on on
the uh seven meter rapide i don't know sometimes i just have to come up with names all right what
we did is instead of using 30 meters we use a 30 meter element and we effectively put a tiny coil
that the user makes usually just wind it i think 13 times and that brings 40 meters into tune
so why would you buy any of these this i better i just can do rapid
this if you've got like an hoa so i've got a number of customers i'll try and dig out the
pictures if i can remember where you can hardly see the rapids it's only like 6.8 meters long
which is you know 24 foot or something you just it's under your roof you put it next to a tree
no one know it's there and if you're restricted you know it's a great antenna to have so it's
if you are after a no holes compromise compromise on height you get every band apart from 30 on
this remember you'd probably get it with your atu button i seem to remember i did on the 990
but i've since realized that 990's got a rather exceptional
atu you know button click ting tuned probably about six or eight to one
you're probably losing half your power but anyway it would still work you see
all right for very low power stuff you're totaling around on ft8 or something at 10 watts you know
so that's the height that classic will sell and sell and sell it just works every time uh i always
felt the 80 meters one a compromise on its look and one it doesn't do dx like a straight vertical
would do let's draw a line under there and start again and i'll now come up with the 18 meter
nebula so this is like the classic it's just super massive so the signature range
comes out of a different factory it's i'm not quite sure if i've got all the pictures here it is
i didn't have a camera wide enough actually i'm just trying to say 18 minutes i actually
got between about 17.3 and 17.6 the height doesn't matter the point is for 80 we go
all up to the top and we just come down a bit and work out where we need to cut it bang and
there's a couple hundred kilohertz on 80 meters performs just as well as a 20 meter vertical but
on 80 right so i've crossed atlantic quite a few times on these on a full size vertical fantastic
so what does this do i'll call it the 18 meter but it's it's the nebula so this is getting 80 60
40 30 and 20 one two three four five and seventeen six there's my six elements
15 we got off to 40 meters and i was getting a perfect tune uh almost a perfect tuning on 12 and
10 i think off either 80 or 60 i can't remember but it was working okay so um more of a low bander
more of an 80 60 40 30 guy you know perfect for that particularly if you're after the last five dx
cc's on 80 meters i've had a couple of customers buy that and that is going at about 500 pounds but
i'm not running through the prices right now i'm just telling you which one you start looking at
so that was it and then the same factory the signature factory sent me a 12.4 a single 12.4
actually they sent me originally four of these these were samples it's a few years ago now
and i never thought what the hell are we going to do with the 12.4 and i discounted it for oh good
couple of years to be frank with you and what just you know why does everyone 12 meter pole
40 foot you see because it's not resin on any band or anything else but we started tinkering
around with it in the field and learning from all my experience with the the rapide here with
the coil and everything and how it mucked up all the harmonics and so on we got there on the end
i thought it would be quite interesting to do here so in fact this is probably my greatest
achievement to be frank with you it's got seven elements and it does 80 to 10 as a vertical all
right and we get an eight so i mean that's a lot of bands by the way every band we're getting
at a tune better than like to 1.21 just imagine what you can do with that you can
leave whisper running between 80 and 10 meters you could change band at will if you've got a
2 vfo radio uh you can be swizzling up on 17 meters here while listening to someone on 20 there
connected to one of these doesn't matter it's instant tune it's not like you've got to press
a button or anything else it's just tuned all the time it's fantastic my greatest achievement
and this is what's in the pot i shouldn't be telling you this because it's months away
all right this is a kind of a copy of the classic it's another 9.5
so this will be a signature 9.5 or signature 10 i don't know
it's a kind of a copy of the classic but it's the top 9.5 meters of this beast basically and
they sent me some time i've got 10 samples and we put last october an aluminium thin walled
aluminium in the ground no concrete or anything i just suck it down about two and a half feet
75 centimeters and i think there was about 60 centimetres showing i've slipped the pole
over and i've just left it there and that's been october it's done the whole winter it hasn't moved
flicks around a bit and everything i just wanted to make sure
and we've had a couple of big storms as you know uh seems to be doing really well so that's quite
exciting but that's for the sort of back end of the year none of those components fit on those
i'm sorry everything's a different diameter so if you're in an upgrade maybe keep your classic
for a rainy day or go on a holiday whatever keep the radials down you could bolt one of these on
rough pricing without me checking i'm just going to tell you where is normally so the
rapide is normally just under 200 the classic is just over 200 and so is the expedition
this is in pounds so if you multiply this by about 1.2 you get dollars if you multiply by about 1.5
you'll get it shipped next day to your place right this is expensive that's 500 and something pounds
uh it's probably 600 with shipping so it's getting on near 800 for this it's just huge
right this is a lot less by a hundred pounds uh 400 they all come with all the wire or you get
everything i'm not doing a sales pitch now just say you get everything it's not like you're buying
like a step-by-r vertical where you need to go out and buy sauce all your wire and everything
else we supply everything right but that's going out the door at the moment i think at 399
shipping's 40 pounds so 34 man but about 500 you should get that next day or day after
the 12.4 signature and this is a bit of an unknown i'm trying to get it at 299 pounds
380 or something and there we are hopefully that will help you understand exactly where i've gone
with everything there'll be no more of these ones got this one here i'm i've got an idea for this
this one here not heavy little minor redesign done then i'm moving over to project x i can't
tell you about and i was about two years away i would have thought all right thanks for bearing
with me a jolly good day this video is coming up here in the meantime a very good day bye for now
very good