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High Sierra Antenna Factory

High Sierra Antennas Are Made By

Highly Trained Technicians Using

State of the Art

Computer Controlled Machines.

Professional Antennas for the Amateur^tm

It was High Sierra Antennas that popularized the motorized antenna with monthly advertisments in CQ and QST Magazines. Over the last 14 years, High Sierra has manufactured more than 17,000 motorized antennas! They are in use all over the world on vehicles and at fixed locations by ham radio operators, governments (FBI & other three letter organizations), military organizations (Army, Coast Guard), emergency relief organizations and by companies (Ford, Hyundai, Mercedes Benz, Mattel & many others). While some individuals have copied our design right down to the small screws that hold the brass strip to the aluminum tube, they have not copied the quality of a High Sierra Antenna. Nothing is just as good as a High Sierra except a High Sierra (you gotta see this picture)!

When we started manufacturing in 1993, everything was done by hand. A machinist using drill guides and 3 drill presses, drilled holes in the aluminum tubes. Typically, that took 20 minutes per tube. Now, using our computer controlled machines, we can drill the holes in a Sidekick tube in just a few seconds. In one of the pictures above, you can see a machinist doing the final step on stacks of Sidekick tubes. The machine behind him drilled the holes. The days of using a drill guide and drill press are long gone. We would not be able to keep up with demand.

As you can see from the pictures, High Sierra Antennas are manufactured using computer controlled machinery. Parts for our antennas are manufactured in very large quantities. Typically, we manufacture 100 to 500 of the same part at a time. Tolerances on most parts are 5 thousandths of an inch or less. That means the variation from part to part is very small. Since we sell a very large number of antennas each week, we must make large quantities that can be assembled by our staff with no issues. If you look at the pictures above, you will see boxes and carts full of parts.

There are a lot things that set High Sierra Antenna apart from those who have copied our designs. For example, the weathershield is injection molded here using our mold. We do not use PVC sprinkler caps that are painted black. We injection mold the parts in black, white and gray to match the color of the antenna. You'll see our name embossed into the plastic. Replacement of the weathershield is very easy to do as part of regular maintenance. You won't have to return a High Sierra Antenna to replace the weathershield.

Another thing that contributes to our quality is our baked-on powder coating. Many parts, including the stainless steel parts, are powder coated. Power coating is much more costly than spray painting. Powder coating also assures a thick, uniform result when we are doing hundreds of tubes at a time.

A major item that separates High Sierra Antennas is that we don't use hazardous Beryllium fingerstock. All other screwdriver antenna use dangerous Beryllium! We use our patented stainless steel contact spring which is easily replaced in less than five minutes as a part of annual maintenance. Another reason for not using Beryllium is the potential for exposure of the hazardous material to our employees and customers. California has some very strict laws regarding the use of such materials. Exposure to Beryllium can kill: It's just that simple.

Another thing that set us apart is that we use fasteners to assemble the antennas that are stainless steel. In the case of the black and gray antennas the fasteners are black oxide coated stainless steel. We don't use pop rivets. If necessary, the entire antenna can be disassembled by removing a few screws. A High Sierra Antenna does not have to be sent back to the factory so the rivets can be drilled out. We're proud of what is inside our antennas! We encourage you to look inside.

There are many more reasons why High Sierra is the most popular motorized antenna. If you have any questions, please email our tech staff using the Contact Us above in the darker blue line.

Recent letter from a customer to one of our staff:

Dear Dan,

About a year and a half ago I succumbed to temptation and got an antenna from a guy who said it was more efficient than High Sierra Antennas. As I do a lot of DXing on 40m and 80m the possibility of an extra couple of dB looked good.

I already had been operating with an HS-1500 for several years, and I have a pretty complete lab, so I decided to make an experiment of it all and characterize my HS-1500 install against the copy. Besides, I wanted to make sure I got what I was paying for!

I ran my own shootouts 3 different times--two different mounting schemes on my truck, and then on a radial ground plane (mountingthe antennas as if for home use). I compared self-resonant base resistance on 40m and 80m with no matching devices (shunt coils or the like), measured with the TenTec/TAPR vector network analyzer, and also measured field strength about 100m away using a calibrated Stoddard NM-20B field intensity meter.

The short story: my HS-1500 was always a few to several ohms lower input resistance, and about 1-2dB better in field strength, than the highly touted copy in all three tests. The radial ground plane test really did it for me, as that eliminates all the variables about mounting/grounding/bonding on the vehicle chassis.

This testing took the full 1-1/2 years noted--mainly because it is so labor-intensive and mechanically challenging (to me at least) to put together a workable mount for the new antenna from the guy. By contrast, I had my HS-1500 operational in a weekend way-back-then.

Three times is enough for me, and I've just sold the copy antenna to another fellow. Interestingly, after I had placed my advert to sell, a different fellow e-mailed me, practically begging me not to sell it, "it just takes a bit of work to get it right", "it's better than anything out there", etc. I challenged him for some "real data" to back up his claim of superiority, which of course he had none of--just the subjective observations of "it works real good for me". It seems that mobile antennas have acquired the cloak of quasi-religious faith. Well I have some subjective data of my own for my HS-1500...the 300 DXCC cards I collected in the past 5 years, many of them on 80m.

So I'll be ordering a new HS-1800 Platinum Package in the next couple of weeks. The HS-1500 is still alive, just retired to 'home service' on that radial ground screen that I had set up for my shootout. I worked 3Y0X on 5 bands with it.

I won't even go into the joy of discussing my results with the other proprietor.

Thanks for making such a fine product available and keep up the good work!

73, Richard

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