Moonraker ScanKing s2000 Scanner Aerial Rip Off - DONT BUY

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barrylewis
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ne guy
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Joined: Sat May 12, 2018 10:43 pm

Moonraker ScanKing s2000 Scanner Aerial Rip Off - DONT BUY

Post by barrylewis » Thu Jun 14, 2018 7:32 pm

A few years ago I had a scan king and was very happy with it, but I moved and couldnt get it down so it remained in my old house.
I decide to buy another recently..

So after lots of research and talking to some radio engineer geeks I decided that the best antenna that suited me was a capacitor loaded broadband type.
I looked at a few other capacitor loaded type and I decided to pay the extra and go with the Moonraker S2000 ScanKing antenna, mainly becuase I thought a recognised manufacturer. I paid £45 for it.

I Mounted it up on a nice big pole clear of my roof and fired up my scanner....................Face Dropped...... Very Disappointing results.
My Dipole tuned to 70Mhz is pulling in a lot more at 150mhz and even 400-500mhz than this S2000 junk.... I was even struggling to pick up BBC Radio 1 on fm band, lots of hiss.

I took it down and visited a friend who is a radio engineer, he connected to a 0- 1Ghz analyser to see if resonant on any freqs, yes it was semi resonant at around 85Mhz but I know this doesnt apply for scanner aerials, you would not expect to see much on an aerial analyser (its not a transmitting aerial). BUT my friend did noticed it was not capacitive and very inductive acording to his meter. He assured me something was wrong with it. So we agreed rather than send it back that we would cut it open and repair it..... so out come the hacksaw.

We cut around the fibreglass tube to slowly reveal the insides piece by piece. And to my surprise all that is in there is a length of enamalled wire with phases twisted into it for different sections of the bad..... NO LOADING CAPACITORS IN SIGHT...... ITS WRITTEN ON THE BOX.... UNIQUE CAPACITOR LOADED DESIGN..... ITS UNIQUE ALRIGHT, THERE ARE NONE!!! The enamalled wire is soldered directly to the centre pin of the aerial socket and wrapped in bubble wrap and parcel tape.

LOOKS LIKE MOONRAKER ARE SAVING MONEY ON THE ADVERTISED DESIGN..... WHERES THE CAPACITORS :-(

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yellowbeard
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Re: Moonraker ScanKing s2000 Scanner Aerial Rip Off - DONT BUY

Post by yellowbeard » Fri Jun 15, 2018 10:13 pm

Nasty, I hate spending money on something you could have twiddled up yourself in an afternoon. If you'd asked here I would have recommended you to get a discone. They turn up on fleabay for €30 or €40 with 25-1300MHz spec, more realistically about 50-500 - this covers the major amateur bands well to tickle the radio hams pickle. You can transmit a few Watts into them too, the SWR can be a bit up and down though.

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