GRA-7350TC 3/8-24 3/8" x24 CB HF 3.5MHz 7-30MHz/50MHz Broadband Telescopic Portable Ham Amateur Mobile Radio Antenna

This antenna is easy to set up, works with any female CB antenna mount that is 3/8x24. It takes some fiddling to get the swr down, and the Q is pretty high, but a decent compact antenna for portable use. It works better than I expected, and beats trying to throw wires up in trees. Make sure you use a counterpoise/radials with it. 4 10m wires hooked to an alligator clip does the trick for me.

UPDATED REVIEW:After Gabil customer service sent me a replacement, I had great success with the antenna. I successfully activated a POTA park out in California using a Yaesu FT-710 at full 100W and was able to make 41 QSOs in 1.5 hours. I am leaving the original review below for now, but I may remove it or at least work some of the remaining concerns into updated review.Old star rating was 2 stars, new star rating is 4 stars.---------OLD REVIEW:This has been "reviewed" on a bunch of youtube channels and I pulled the trigger on it. I have the tripod as well, which is very decent as far as I can tell (but only used it with this antenna, the antenna part of which was a big fail). Let's review what we have here:Promises: "3.5MHz 7-30MHz/50MHz"I will address these individually:PROMISE #1 7-30MHzI'm going to start with the big range, 7-30 MHz.THE BAD:Try as I might, I could NOT get the antenna in a usable SWR range (I consider usable under 2.0, but in these cases I could not get it even 3.0 — completely unusable) on the following bands AT ALL:12m — huge deal? maybe not, but def not something that shouldn't work10m — what? WHAT? yes, this is a big deal. I couldn't get it on 10m AT ALL!THE GOOD, in decreasing oder of goodness:17m — this is perfect across the ENTIRE band @ ~1.2, see screenshot. Now, unfortunately, this is a very narrow band AND just about any other multi-band antenna will dial this in just about perfect. But that doesn't detract from the fact that this antenna is excellent here. I love 17m!15m — quite good, see screenshot (marker @ FT8 freq)! This is another narrow band, and most other multibands also do very well here, but again, it's not a detraction from the antenna's performance — it kicks ass here!20m — not great. It works, and it's acceptable, mostly under 2.0 (and you can move the generous "dip" to cover either all data and all/most of phone). Here you kinda need to start to decide which part of the band you're gonna use and adjust for that particular case (and re-adjust if you want to stay optimal if you go from data to phone and back). Lowest SWR is 1.7, that's the best you will get if you optimize for whatever part of the band you will use. This is fine for POTA/SOTA tho.40m — uh-oh. Much more "not great" than 20m. Whereas on 20m you COULD just tune the entire band if you don't care about being optimal everywhere, here you may NEED to pick, and ADJUST antenna for the part of the band you will use. IF you were to stay away from the band edges, and were ok with being very non-optimal toward the usable SWR valley's edges, you could use it that way, but most likely you will tune for data or phone. Optimized for the freq you want to use on this band, you will get 1.7 SWR, which is okay.PROMISE #2 3.5MHz80m — bad. Possibly unusable and unsafe for your radio. You get a narrow dip, which may not be enough for 3 kHz of bandwidth. See screenshot. This used the 3.5 MHz coil, of course. You CAN adjust where the dip is, to move it around, but it's so narrow that I would stay away.PROMISE #3 50MHzI could not tune 6m to a usable SWR no matter what I tried. It did waste a lot of my time because the instructions for 6m are very poor. I tried it all tho, including setting the telescope to 1090mm. I tried just the top part, and also including bottom coil. I also tried every settable height, started from fully extended and retracted slowly, at least 30 adjustments, to telescope fully retracted. Before giving up completely, I tried with the 80m coil just for kicks. Nothing worked, the best I got was 6:1 SWR or so.CONCLUSION: I believe my particular copy may have a manufacturing defect, all of the non-tunable bands (12m, 10m, 6m) are the ones where the lower coil would be short and, in the case of 6m, fully retracted. I'm thinking maybe due to defect it cannot retract properly and it affects the ones where it needs to be barely extended or fully retracted. This does not explain 80m, but who knows, maybe a defect could affect that too.I have reached out to Gabil, the manufacturer and seller, here thru Amazon and asked for a replacement (which for some reason, clicking the Amazon "Return & Replace" does NOT allow for, only a return — another broken promise, this is on Amazon as well). If they respond in a timely fashion and replace the antenna I was sent, I am both willing to re-run the entire battalion of tests, AND update this review (including star rating, based on both customer service experience and performance of replacement antenna in regards to the promises the product makes).

Great antenna. It installs quickly and is easy to adjust. I've used it with a mag mount and with an antenna mount attached to my truck. In both cases, it worked great running 5 watts. It packs up small and easily fits in my backpack.

I'll start out by saying I would've gave this item 4 stars but the measuring scale that is on the adjustable part of the antenna was already peeling off.The antenna itself is extremely effective given how small it is. You do need a sufficient set of radials to really make this antenna efficient. The tripod that this manufacturer makes for this antenna is absolutely awesome by the way.

Planning to go to New York and needed a travel-sized antenna for the POTA sites there. Was going to be tough to do an EFHW with the places I was looking at. No place to string it up and didn't want to deal with the mast. Just got this in and it didn't disappoint. Used a Wolf River base and two non-elevated tuned radials on 20w Xiegu G90. On 10m Got 55 Puerto Rico from Southern AZ! 57 to AR no problem. It's a little adjustable coil like my Wolf River. The coil itself is well made. There's a little locking collar as well. Whip could be a little more sturdy but I'm happy. Included compare some pic with MFJ1979 for size comparison. Pretty small!

When I received it, the whip was slightly bent. Unfortunately I had not unpacked it in time for return.The whip part was bent somewhat. Not to unusability, and was able to straighten.But give it is thin and possibly not too hard to damage I found there is no replacement parts available.And it uses a non standard thread so you'd need to get an adaptor to say use an MFJ or WRC whip.They are out there, but needs some searching.It is otherwise well made, and I'd buy it again. Tuned with 6 10 foot radios 10-40.

The first unit I received used a piece of tape to index how far the coil was extended. After a period of time tightening the retention nut would tear up the piece of tape. I requested that they would make the index laser etched onto the tubing and that would stop the damage and make the product first class. Not too long after the suggestion was made they changed the design to the laser etched design. Now the product is first rate and can recommend. Previous review was two star due to the labeling issue. I have to upgrade my review to five Star.

Well made, seems sturdy. Sure it isn't as efficient as a tuned dipole, but it ain't 30 miles long either. Great for the go bag.