Lets see if we can get "SPIDERBEAM DXCC" completed...
There are already spiderbeams active in approximately 70 countries.
Your pictures and user reports are very much appreciated, especially from countries not yet shown in the gallery below...




Read what other users say. Click the pictures to enlarge.

DXpedition by V73HE/JA1HEE, V73JY/JA1JQY, V73OP/JI1FPO and V73KJ/JA1KJW RIG: FT840, FT850, K2/100, Antennas: 1.8-10 Dipoles, 14/18/21 Spiderbeam, 21/24/28 Hexbeam ... the Spiderbeam (built by JA1KJW) worked fine and the received signals were always stronger than on the other antennas! ... enjoyed the pile-ups very much ... had some strong winds and guy lines were of course necessary but all antennas stayed up. 73 Sasi JA1KJW (Sasi also translated the construction guide to Japanese language - Arrigato!)

DXpedition to Chesterfield Island by DJ8NK, DJ9ON, DJ9RR, DK9KX, DL3KDV, DL5NAM and DL6JGN RIG: 1000W, LP5, Spiderbeam, Verticals ... have just returned from our TX9 Trip, attached pls find some pictures for your collection :-) .. The red/white plastic bands attached to the beam where intended scare the birds away, although to no great avail... The spiderbeam yielded very good results for us and we can only recommend it to others! 73, Jan DJ8NK http://www.df3cb.com/chesterfield/

... we built 2 spiderbeams for 20-15-10 and 17-12m. Brought both to Austral islands/Tubuai 6.1.2004 look picture ! Antennas were abt 10 meter above ground and abt 50 meter to sea. Antennas were fixed north all time & worked very well! (operators: OH1RX, OH3JR, OH6KN and OH9MDV). See http://personal.inet.fi/private/pcf2004/ Excerpt from Finnish Radio magazine: FO_OH6KN.pdf

Expedition to 5W0 and KH8 by DF2SS and DL1VKE Equipped with our first working prototype of 5-band Spiderbeam (20-17-15-12-10m) For further comments see http://www.dl2mdz.de/html/samoa_01_6.html

DXpedition to St. Helena Island by DL9GFB, DL7UVO and DL3NRV. RIG: 100W, Butternut vertical, longwire, Spiderbeam ('low-sunspot-version' 20/17/15m) ... many thanks for designing this nice piece of antenna technics ... have returned yesterday after 6 days operating as ZD7F, ZD7J and ZD7T ... bands opened earlier and stayed open longer than with our other antennas ... incredible pile-ups with only 100w ... over 12500 QSO speak for themselves ... 73 Joerg DL3NRV

... just to let you know that on Tuesday afternoon we finally managed to get the Spider Beam up on top of the 45 foot tower, and it seems to be working really, really well, so I am very pleased ...I set the resonance with an antenna analyser when it was just a couple of metres from the ground to a point very low down in the CW section of each band, and then checked again when it was at 45 feet, and as expected, the resonant frequency had moved between 100 and 150 Khz higher, which is fine for me as I mostly only do CW and Data modes ... 73 Joe 7Q7BP (G3MRC)

... used the spiderbeam on my one-man dxpedition to 6W and was very happy. It is a very nice design and easy to assemble. I am determined to make another one for the WARC bands in the future ... http://users.pandora.be/on5tn/

Barrenjoey lighthouse activation ... my new spiderbeam passed its first test in VK - super performance! We activated Barrenjoey Lighthouse last weekend with our ham club VK2MB. Everybody was thrilled, especially by the excellent F/B ratio! 73, Ben VK2IA http://www.qsl.net/vk2mb/photos.html

CQWW CW 2003 Multi/2 Expedition - Second place worldwide in CQWWCW 2003 Contest, using 2 Spiderbeams ... at TS7N we have been using 2 spiderbeams, and we were very happy with both of them. We have put the first one up on our first day of operating, and I had a bet with the "aluminium specialists" that we would be able to put the beam together in 2 hours time. Which we did, considering the fact that we lost 30 minutes searching for the right tools :-). The spiderbeam withstood wind force 7 without problems ... We were quite lucky though.... 2 hours after the contest 2 horses came galloping through the antenna farm at qth nr. 2, taking down 1 vertical of our 80 mtrs 4-square. All in all we were quite happy, the 2 spider beams made a large contribution toward our 10k+ qso's during the CQWW CW, and the ratio of qso's/kg is unbeatable!! 73, Rein PA0R ...many thanks again for your help with the two Spiderbeams, which gave us really great results at TS7N. The antenna is ideal for expeditions because it is so easy to transport and can be turned with small rotators. We used 2 little TV rotators. One Spiderbeam stayed in Tunisia. It will be put up in Monastir at 3V8SQ. On our way back home we visited their QTH and found a nice place for the beam. 73, Andy DJ7IK http://www.qsl.net/ts7n

CT3EE in CQ WPX CW 2003 - new World Record with Spiderbeam & 100W ...more CT9D - DXpedition to Desertas Islands (AF-46) in IOTA Contest 2003 ...more CT9L - Multi/2 Expedition in CQWW SSB 2003 ...more

CQWW SSB 2004 Expedition by RWDCC - DH4JQ, DJ8VC, DL1EK, DL3EW, DL7AOS RIG: 1000W, 2 Spiderbeams, Verticals, Dipoles... After scratching our heads a bit at first, we got the 2 Spiderbeams up and running. They withstood the strong winds (up to 90km/h) all the time and worked very well ... rates of over 300 QSO/h into North/South America and Caribbean made for a hectic contest experience ... http://www.rwdcc.de/html/cqwwdx_2004_azoren_bilder.html

9H3MM in CQ WPX CW 2004 - new European Record with Spiderbeam & 100W My first DXpedition using the new Spiderbeam Version 2 Design. Great QTH on a hill but also heavy storms up there. The rotator broke after 6hrs of contesting and the antenna crashed down from the 8m mast. After a quick shock I realized that it had survived without a single piece broken! 2 hours later 9H3MM was back on the air and of course very happy with the strength of the new fiberglass tubes. Reliability test passed, Record set 24 hours later, Mission accomplished... Full story & more pictures here: http://ww.qsl.net/df4sa

UA9CLB / UA9CDC / YM2ZF: ...pleased to be able to report good news ... were testing your antenna during WPX CW in Turkey when doing Multi-OP (YM2ZF) together with Sergey, TA2ZF. Came back home very unhappy with everything but antenna. Managed to compare spider with the commercial 5 el tribander that Sergey has and spider outperformed that log-periodic commercial by at least 2 s units... attached picture: spiderbeam used at YM2ZF including 40m 2ele (spreaders are extended to 8m length)

CQP2004 County Expedition as KX7M/6 Southeast View from my hilltop location, viewn from Fire Lookout. On the left is the dry Honey Lake, and on the bottom of this range of hills is the Plumas-Lassen county line. On the right the Spiderbeam on a 30ft pole. This year I operated CQP with 100W, and had almost 1500 QSOs, including 50 EU stations. I was positively surprised with the combination of a nice hilltop location and Spiderbeam, being loud on the East coast, and even to work 35 EU's on 15m in this Sunspot decline years, from the West coast. 73, Denny KX7M ... http://www.kx7m.net

Ural Contest Group (UCG) ... is doing a local competition in WRTC style, each year during IARU CW Fieldday. This is where they set up 25 exactly similar stations (Spiderbeam, 100W) in one really BIG fieldday to set a level playing field and compare results against each other. See write-up and more pictures at http://www.qsl.net/df4sa ...just worked in WAE SOAB LP from UA9 with spider beam and added 2 el 40 meters. I seem to have managed to set new Asian LP record from here - without going to 5B4... :-) ... Great to be able to operate from the country site (very quiet), heard most everyone who called - see 3830 reflector for details. (UA9CDC, August 18th, 2003)

CS7T in CQWW CW 2001 - new European Record with Spiderbeam & 100W ...more CS5C, CS5F - Culatra Island DXpedition in IOTA Contest 2003 ...more Full story & more pictures here: http://ct1end.netpower.pt/eu145_culatra_2003/

... put the Spiderbeam on a 12m mast last week. Because of missing space we could not pre-tune the antenna in 5m height as described in the manual, but it is resonant on all 3 bands ... the big moment came next morning when OM Olaf (DL7CX) did the first trial runs with the antenna. 10 stations from JA, 2 from ZL and one VK between 08:00 and 8:30 UTC with 5/9 or 5/9 + 20 dB reports. Olaf is an antenna wizard and spent the whole day testing the antenna thourougly with several stations worldwide. Late in the evening he concluded that the antenna is always at least 3 S-units above my B & W dipole ... So, we are very content with the antenna. I can also tell you that after Olaf left a sudden storm with gusts up to 10 Beaufort hit our QTH, and the antenna took it without problems ... http://www.qsl.net/ea8azc

Faroe Island DXpedition by DL2RMC and DL1RTL. RIG: 600W, Spiderbeam, Verticals, Dipoles ... used a Spiderbeam "Version 1" on our trip. The old version plays UFB too, after we spaced the driven element feedpoints somewhat more. In the meantime I have assembled the antenna several times in this configuration, always with the same good results regarding SWR and directivity. In OY we made approx 7000 QSOs in 9 days. As a comparison we had a multiband dipole and a vertical. The Spiderbeam definitely outperformed both of them, especially for DX QSOs. Also it survived a Storm in 10m height quite well and I am still impressed with the antenna ... http://hkmann.de/oy/

DXpedition to Tromoy Island (EU-061) by DG3HWO and DL5ME. RIG: 600W, Spiderbeam and 40/30m vertical ... converted our 20-15-10m Spiderbeam into the 20-17-15m Version (manual chapter 4.3) ... did most of the conversion work on the island, no time before ... oh yes the beam worked very well ... surprised how many DX stations called (see attached logbook), remember its summer propagation! ... stations from Tokyo with simple dipole or vertical antennas consistently reported "loudest station from Europe" with 59 and 59+ reports.

Well known low power contester 7S7V puts a temporary Spiderbeam on this flat roof overlooking Malmoe for each contest: ... I'm very satisfied. It's light, very important to me because I use very light tower to put the antenna up. Good F/B on all bands, always better then 15dB. I found all the data about SWR/ F/B/ GAIN to be really true... http://www.qsl.net/7s7v/cqww/cw/2003/index.html

OH0EC in CQ WPX CW 2004 one-man DXpedition by DL1EKC

2003 Expedition to Hjelm Island IOTA EU-172 by DJ2KS, DJ5KP & DL6KAC. See http://www.dl6kac.de/html/oz0ais.html

Spiderbeam picture with the Alps mountains in the background Put the mast and antenna up on saturday, finished at dawn with the antenna mounted in 10m height. Checked the SWR on Sunday morning, all bands immediately below 1:2 - super. On the afternoon the bands opened up. Brasil RS 59, Columbia RS59+, etc ... these are reports I could only dream of so far with my 40m longwire (running in direction East-West Richtung) On average, the reports were about 5 S-units higher on the beam! Nice antenna, congratulations & 73, Walter HB0PC

(Tuesday) ... finished building the 5-band Spiderbeam kit ... needed only minor adjustment for SWR and everything went OK at first time. Now disassembled all & am going for a portable test on Sunday. I am happy with the antenna and it looks beautiful when up in the air! (Sunday) ... a pleasure to use Spiderbeam again, in wonderful WX (see picture). Me and Paolo IK5VLO put up the antenna in about 1 hour, from my car to the top of the mast. We used an FT100D with 70W. Antenna was not so high, my mast is very thin ... a 7P8 replied at first CW call while many stations called him. We were lucky, I admit, but antenna really did its job! A TG9 gave us 57 in SSB, and many more stations from W/VE ... 73, Silvio IZ5DIY http://www.arimpt.org/iz5diy/spiderbeam/spiderbeam.htm

December 12th, 2003: ...please send the construction guide for the spider beam. I spend 2 months of the year in Europe and I need a decent portable antenna that I can work ZS and will not cost me an arm and a leg. July 24th, 2004: ...Spiderbeam commissioned on 18th July. Excellent results to ZS on 15 metres, 5x6 into East London, Pretoria, and Capetown. See attached picture. Best regards, Richard, F/ZS6TF/p

It was done :-) !!! Two weeks ago we put the spider on a 10m tower (look photos). Incredible with your antenna - a lot of qso ...Am using 100-300W on SSB and getting very good reports. Last few days I contacted S9SS/Sao Thome (RS 57) XW1FAN/Laos (real 59 report), ZK1USA/Cook Isl. (RS 57), ZL2KOT/New Zealand (real RS 59), ZK3DX/Tokelau Isl. (real RS 58 on 20m) - wow that is 16000km. I can't believe it !! Because on my vertical I didn't even hear many of those stations, or they were approx. 52 in the noise... It's a miraculous antenna. 73 Jerome, F4ANJ

antenna tests at EA4BQ

... assembled your spiderbeam in my 2nd QTH successfully first on open meadow space in November 2003 and tested it. Then put it on "real mast" between country houses. When raised up, it is about 12.5 m high and works really well! The raising procedure is a bit "special" with my installation, as it involves assembling and raising in interleaved steps (the antenna cannot be assembled fully on the ground, because of very limited space available between the houses) ... 73, Jiri OK1CJN

Dear Con, ... a month passed since I installed and use your Spiderbeam antenna. It works perfect in comparison with my vertical multiband antenna which you can see on the picture. All results described in your articles have been confirmed once more! Many thanks for your good antenna publication 73! Anatoly, RX1AP

Can you spot the antenna? SM5CJW pleased his neighbours by painting his spiderbeam in white, so it nearly dissapears against the sky. The mast is a 7,2 m long 50/46 mm galvanized steel antenna tube. It is brown below the roof and white above the roof, also nearly invisible. ... After some minor adjustments my 5 band Spiderbeam was ready to go. I must say it is a really amazing antenna. So big and so light ... if I compare it, 10 m up, with my old dipole, 6 m up, I often hear DX-stations clear with the Spiderbeam when they are below the noise floor of the dipole ... it has really given my KX1 (with 1 - 2W out) a good chance to a lot of DX. In the CQWW contest I got answers from most of the stations I called (many of them in USA and Siberia). The spiderbeam is really performing very well. It has also survived the first snowstorm. My amazed neighbours say it looks OK. 73, Bo SM5CJW

... tried to build the antenna myself for permanent installation according to my local conditions, with the material I had available... I had a 7m high mast on the top of our 9-story building, and 5m long wooden bars (40x40mm). I optimized the antenna for my local conditions with MMANA and decided to feed every driven element via gamma-match, relay box and common cable to my shack. Yes, of course, with the wooden bars, it is not a lightweight antenna so it needs strong guy lines at two levels. Gain and F/B parameters are nearly like in MMANA, only 20m is a bit worse. My antenna you can see on the photo. No problems so far! ... 73 Alex, UT4EK.

G3SHF & the Stockport Radio Society built the first spiderbeam copy, following the construction manual ... 2002 Jamboree-on-the-Air report using new spiderbeam ... On air results were great! ... On Friday I made a test call on 20m and were called by SM0 and immediately afterwards by a VK6. Over the weekend we used the antenna on all modes to good effect. We worked into VE7 and again into VK6 with RS 58 report. (We only used 100 watts power output on SSB) Towards the end of the event yesterday we had to stop an EU pile-up we had running on 20m while the DL contest was taking place around us. ... We are very very pleased with the antenna and will be using it again this coming Saturday in the CQWW SSB contest ...more

... I've been testing Spiderbeam about a month and it really is a performer. It definitely works better than my trapped tribander yagi. 73, Juha OH4JK (... a little bit later OH4JK became the first one to build a WARC spiderbeam...)

Austrian QRP fieldday 2003 ... attached is a picture of my spiderbeam taken at our QRP Fieldday on August 3rd, 2003. The antenna was a real success and gave outstanding results... 73, Hans OE6JAD

... the signal reports received from 1000 to 5000 km were always very strong, and compared to other local stations, which also operated with 3 element beams, always in favor of the Spiderbeam! I was told to have the stongest signal on the band at that moment. Contacts to South America and Japan gave real S9 reports, unfortunately no local station was QRV to obtain a comparative report. My transmit power was 100 W PEP. The F/B ratio on large distance was mostly 3 to 4 S points (= 18 to 24 db), in some cases up to 40 db were reported. (Measured by transmitting a constant carrier and signal report from other station)

... have just adjusted the beam and put it on its 10 meter aluminium mast ... just worked ZK1KAT through the pileup on 15 with 100 Watts. He didn't believe the callsign at first hi... I could not hear the station either on my DX loop (4 x 40m loop skywire at 33 ft) nor on the 40 meters vertical, and he was S5 on the beam. Got very good reports from JA on 15 as well, always minimum 2 S-units louder than the loop, same with K6 on 20 compared to my 1 ele delta loop.... Comparing with the loop, the beam is always 1-2 S-units louder, for DX sometimes 4 S-units louder. I can't believe it.

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Every year I visit my relatives in Bolivia for a few weeks. Until now I used a 6 Band Windom but as sunspots are declining I decided to bring a small spiderbeam for 15/12/10m. (4m Boom / 6m spreader carrying 15m dipole, 12m 2ele, 10m 3ele - further details in the Spiderbeam Yahoo-Group). In 11 days of activity I made roughly 1500 contacts (76% to Europe). 10m and 12m have been more or less dead, but within the short openenings I got quite good reports from Europe while the Windom wasn´t really able to help. Especially 15m was very important, as the Windom doesn´t work on that band.

(Several pictures from German Stations. Click to enlarge.)

DL1VRL --- April 21st, 2004
... last week I assembled and tested my new spiderbeam at 12m height. It works UFB! This morning I could work T33C, KH6, JA9./mm (North Pacific), 3D2MR, FO5RH, A61Q, VQ9GB, VE7, VU, ZS, EP3PTT and several other stations in just a few hours. I am thrilled, what a wonderful design! I use the beam in my country QTH during the summer, it will be disassembled in late October and stored until April. Good DX and CUAGN! Thomas DL1VRL


DK0RE --- September 30th, 2003
... put up a Spiderbeam at 14m height ... plunged into the WAE SSB Contest ... could not believe how good Martin's 700W linear and the Spiderbeam worked together ... O-tone Martin: "I have never experienced something like this in my whole ham life". We put whole South America in the log. No Problem to reach Venezuela, Paraguay, Brasilia, Chile or whatever. Just one single call and we were in the log. Comments like **big Signal, Very good modulation and strong signal** are not normal in a Contest, but during this evening and night we heard them several times... http://www.darc.de/n/47/aktionen/CEPT_2_aktion/body_cept_2_aktion.html


DM3ML --- August 10th, 2003
... just found out that I worked CT9D among the 19 QSOs during the last hour of the IOTA contest on 20m. I worked you with my new spiderbeam. I only heard you after finding the spot in the cluster and turning the antenna in your direction, then got through with the first call! Thats the way a DXer likes his antenna. In one sentence: the spiderbeam really works good for me and I am positively surprised! ...
The assembly of the antenna took place during several summer afternoons. Everything fit together perfectly and enough Kevlar rope and DX-wire was supplied. I put the beam on the telescopic tower at my weekend garden shack, which I can extend to 9m height. All the SWR values were on the spot immediately. On 20m and 15m the minimum values occured at 14250 and 21300, on 10m at 28050. Next time I will shift these frequencies a little bit. I was even more pleased with my tests regarding front-to-side and front-to-back ratio (4 S-units or 3 and more). I have used numerous directive antennas before, but have never before experienced such an outstanding directivity on all bands (incl. 20m!). The best example was a VP2M station. I could not hear him with the antenna pointing NE, he came above the noise after rotating to SW, finally arrived at a solid 56 report when the antenna pointed exactly in his direction (W), and (even more important) came back on my first call, using 300 W. The signals on the spiderbeam are generally 2 S-units louder than on my R7 vertical and the noise is much lower.
I have quite a high success rate when calling for rare ones ... With ZK1JD coming back on first call and FO5RA answering my CQs, the antenna really must be working, congrats & TNX!


DM5TI / DL2RMC (VK9XW / VK9CD) --- July 31st, 2003
... have assembled a spiderbeam for our planned DXpedition to VK9X/C (coming up in October 2003), put it up on an 8m telescopic mast, carefully measured and tested its performance, and also used the antenna in several contests.
Our comparison antenna was a 2 ele triband trap beam, put up on a 12m mast. The results in favor of the spiderbeam exceeded our expectations by far. Stations barely readable on the trap beam were easy to read (and work!) on the spiderbeam. We are very content with our tests so far ... and view this antenna as an optimum solution for DXpeditions, regarding weight and transportation length.


DL3KH --- February 20th, 2004
... am an experienced NEC user & was always sure I would never want an interlaced yagi, nor one with bent elements ... after evaluating your design I really was positively surprised and could not resist buying the kit ... now I have an interlaced yagi WITH bent elements and am totally pleased with its performance! ... have installed it permanently on top of my roof, see attached picture. The antenna showed no problems at all during our heavy winter storms, although for permanent installation I recommend using an Emotator 747 or similar rotator ...


DK4WW / DL0CB--- August 12th, 2003
... the spiderbeam worked really well during CW Fieldday and brought us to second place (OB class), with the most multipliers of all participants! ... am really satisfied with the antenna and will put it up permanently at home now. http://www.darc.de/distrikte/y/24/Bilder/imagepages/image15.html


DL6OZ --- October 31st, 2003
... assembled your kit 3 months ago and have a lot of fun with my new antenna! I have installed it permanently 3m above my roof and my DXCC count has gone up substantially ...


DL1EKC --- September 21st, 2003
...... just before WAG contest I finished setup of my Spiderbeam at about 11 m height and it works great! The condx last weekend were not really fine, but the DX was just there. Worked a number of interesting stations (VK9XYL et al), VK on short and long path, all with good signals (e.g. VK long path 559 in both directions, using 100 W). So I'm really happy with it..


DC4BQ --- October 30th, 2004
Hello Con ... many thanks for your efforts in designing this multiband portable beam. Have just been using my 5 Band Spider (V2.00) for the first few trips and was delighted how good it worked.. Attached please see a picture of Spiderbeam and 80m long dipole with symmetric feed line.
73 Martin DC4BQ

DJ6ZM and DJ6LE designed a Monster Spiderbeam with 24m boom lenght: 80m 2 Elements - 40m 3 Elements - 30m 3 Elements See the picture on the left!!

Many thanks for info about spider beam.I received all via e-mail OK. I made the 5 band version and antenna is working excellent, more than I was expecting. AT CQWW SSB I made over 600 QSOs with it just to try the possibility of this construction. For sure I will recommend this project to other hams. TNX 73 & best DX from Marko 9A5BB....

...our team (HB9CRV & me) made a super score in this years Helvetia Contest! I finally found the time to assemble your spiderbeam kit during spring holidays. Despite our low installation height (only 8m above ground) it worked fantastically! Many times I switched to our comparison dipole at 13m height and could not believe my ears. Result: lots of DX in the log, lots of multipliers and by far the first place in the contest ...

... am interesting in buying a second spiderbeam kit if still available. I have built the first one and it is working very well indeed. Many thanks, Vincent G0LMX