Well, what's it like then?

I've had a bit of time to play with the new HF antenna that I put up earlier in the week. It's a Dual Beam Pro:


http://www.proantennas.co.uk/dualbeampro.htm

I've only had a Windom here up to now, so I can only compare it with that antenna. So far I can report that I am very impressed with the Dual Beam Pro. Some signals are significantly stronger on the new antenna, and none so far have been weaker. The other evening on 17M USA stations were 5 S-points up on the Dual Beam Pro. This will have been aided by the Dual Beam Pro pointing E-W at the time and the Windom being permanently N-S, but still a significant improvment in my working conditions!

Anyhow, on all 5 bands except 20M the FT-950 internal tuner will tune the antenna, and on 20M it easily tunes with my external ATU. I was expecting the rig to be unable to tune the antenna at all on any bands! So the expected miss-match can't be all that bad. I haven't actually looked at the SWR of the antenna on the bands, but it was expected to really need an external tuner.

I have to confess that I was rather sceptical about such a simple and small antenna, but so far its performance has been far grater than my expectations. Well done Pro Antennas!